War, Presidents and Public Opinion by John E. Mueller

About this book

Selected in 1995 as one of the "Fifty Books That Significantly Shaped Public Opinion Research, 1946-1995" by the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Recipient in 2007 of the first Warren J. Mitofsky Award for Excellence in Public Opinion Research, presented by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research In War, Presidents and Public Opinion, some of the most deeply-held assumptions about what the American people think of their involvement in the Vietnamese war turn out to be unsupportable. For example, it is possible that the anti-war protest during Vietnam increased the popularity of the war (chapter 6), and the wars in Korea and Vietnam, contrary to many opinions, were disproportionately supported by the college-educated and by the young (chapter 5). Using a comparative approach to the subject, Mueller shows how polling results are often misused in the press and by politicians. His rigorous analysis of public opinion poll data leads to new conclusions on attitudes toward war and the Presidents who led us into and out of these conflicts. And in turn, it should force the fair-minded to make a change in some previously-held convictions. Highly readable well-organized, uncompromising--War, Presidents and Public Opinion may well become the basic reference work on public opinion and war. **High-quality paperback reproduction of the original with supervision of the author**