The bottom line is that the popularity of certain popular figures cannot be explained by rational or utilitarian motives, but by cognitive needs and processes.
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The only thing that work for Bush is his stubbornness which many people see as guarantee of order in what appears to them as a complex, ambiguous, and scary world. They look for simplicity and confirmation that 'Murica is still number one. As long as Bush maintains that illusion by blowing up brown-skinned without too many US losses - he will attract large following, even among those who will certainly lose from his economic policies. It is NOT the economy, stupid! Its is the status, and it is not for sale.
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The other day I had an interesting conversation with my boss who, in the not quite on the mark futuristic jargon of tech firms, is known as "Team Leader".
He asked who I was voting for and I told him Kerry. He started the usual Kerry bashing you can find on any "conservative" blog: Kerry's a "tax and spend liberal from Taxachussets who married well and lives like a king."
I advised him to save his best anti Kerry routines for someone who actually gave a good goddamn because no love light shines from my eyes for that man.
"Well then," he asked "why are you voting for him?" I explained what by now, in certain quarters, might be called the standard ABB position - that as awful as Kerry's very likely to be the Bush team, composed of radicals who've managed to shock even old style imperialists with their recklessness and disregard for reality are too dangerous by half and must be relieved of command.
I told him there were perhaps as many as 30 thousand Iraqis and over a thousand Americans dead because of what, even in a best case scenario, is described as "a mistake". And let's not even talk about Afghanistan or the domestic agenda.
And so on and so forth.
After which I asked why he was voting for Bush.
He explained that while everything I said was probably valid (he was willing to concede quite a bit of debating ground in a gentlemanly fashion) he admired Bush for being "steadfast" and "resolute". Bush, he said, is "a man of his word who said he was going to do something and did it."
I pointed out that it is not particularly admirable to pursue the same course after events have proved the route to be disastrous - if I drove off a cliff after repeated warnings, you wouldn't attend the funeral to applaud my steady hand on the wheel in the face of certain death, you'd wonder what hell my problem was. He replied that this "show of strength" - as a display, a sort of blood and bomb splattered global, open-air theater (my interpretation of his words) - was more important than the actual wisdom or folly of the policies pursued.
So inadvertently, he clearly stated a preference for unreality and a dream of American invincibility over the messy details unfolding around us.
Although he's unusual (perhaps) in his ability to combine a this-far-and-no-farther analytical ability with flights of fancy (yes, your points are valid but 'peace through superior firepower' will work), I've run across the same explanation - more or less - for supporting Bush from a number of quite clever people.
.d.