An article by Philip Klinkner, the James S. Sherman Associate Professor of Government, was published in the June issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly. The article titled "Mr. Bush's War: Foreign Policy in the 2004 Election" examined the factors that accounted for George W. Bush's victory in the 2004 election. Klinkner suggested that people's views on the Iraq war were more influenced by what they thought about President Bush than what they thought about foreign policy and Iraq. Commenting on Bush's re-election, Klinkner noted "…foreign-policy concerns were far more significant than attitudes on moral and cultural issues." He continued, "The importance of foreign-policy issues stemmed from significant partisan polarization on the issue of Iraq. This partisan polarization… is not, however, the result of strikingly different foreign-policy beliefs of Democrats and Republicans, but rather the results of polarized attitudes towards the war's chief architect--George W. Bush."
