Morning Examiner: How big a bounce? How long?

The question everyone’s asking: It’s not just Washington. The third most searched term yesterday on Google (after “osama bin laden death” and “new york daily news”) was “obama approval rating.” So how big will the bump be?

Republican pollster Bill McInturff looked at post-WWII presidents who enjoyed foreign policy rallies and found an average bump of 13 percentage points in presidential job approval, which faded after 22 weeks. More recently, Gallup‘s Frank Newport notes that President Bush’s approval rating went from 56% on December 11th, to 63% on December 14th, after Saddam Hussein’s 2003 capture. By January 11th, that 7 point bump had evaporated and Bush was back down to 53%.