Four years on, war costs Bush at home and abroad

By David Alexander

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four years after he began the Iraq war, a diminished President George W. Bush has sacrificed much of his domestic agenda and eroded U.S. credibility abroad in pursuit of the sort of nation-building he once scorned, analysts say.

The president's job approval ratings have fallen from 90 percent shortly after the September 11 attacks to just over 30 percent.

He forfeited the dream of cementing Republican control over Congress and his administration is increasingly under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike.

"There is simply no question in my mind that the Iraq war has substantially undercut Bush's ability to get other things done domestically or internationally," said Richard Eichenberg, a professor at Tufts University who has studied Bush's approval ratings.

"When he was re-elected in the fall of 2004 he interpreted the election ... by saying that 'I have political capital. I'm going to spend it.' But the fact of the matter is he's spent it all on Iraq and he's got precious little left," Eichenberg said.

After the Iraq invasion, Bush's approval ratings became linked to casualty figures and less tied to traditional factors like the economy, Eichenberg and Richard Stoll of Rice University found in researching the president's poll numbers.

"It resembles in a lot of ways what happened with President (Lyndon) Johnson in Vietnam," Stoll said. The war "sort of looms so large that it pushes almost everything else off the agenda."

In his initial years in office, Bush pushed an 11-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut through Congress, overhauled the nation's education law and added a drug benefit to the health insurance program for the elderly.