Bush told a Salt Lake City audience of war veterans that America must continue to "take the fight to the terrorists abroad before they can attack us here at home" - a remark that comes as half of Americans in one recent poll favored some type of U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

And with bad news from the Middle East growing and anti-war support galvanizing, Bush has to keep his message out there.

"He's got to at least keep his base shored up. That I believe is absolutely essential," says John Zogby, one of the nation's leading pollsters and president of Zogby International, who saw some erosion of the president's core support in recent surveys. "He can't lose any of it. What can a guy do as president with numbers like that?"

Come to Utah, apparently.

Bush chose one of his and Republicans' most ardent strongholds to deliver his message and one of the best audiences for it, a convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Utah is arguably Bush's biggest fan, giving the president his largest margin of victory in 2000 and 2004. And Idaho, where Bush will give another speech on Wednesday, currently gives Bush the highest approval rating of any state, according to New Jersey-based Survey USA.

Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, found his way to Utah in 1992 when the news wasn't favoring the GOP incumbent against challenges from Democrat Bill Clinton and independent Ross Perot. With Bush's approval rating dipping into the 30s, Utah became his oasis, and a packed, 20,000-strong crowd at Brigham Young University provided him with some good medicine to get back on the campaign trail.

Zogby, along with other political observers, doubts the current president's comments in Utah and Idaho will give him a boost in the polls, but it's a good way to at least stay even.

"He's pretty much at the mercy of what happens on the ground in Iraq," Zogby says. "The speech is . . . timed well in the sense that two things are going on: His numbers are slipping and he's looking not good, and he hasn't been terribly visible to the public."

Bush is on a five-week vacation to his Texas ranch, though he has taken jaunts to other states to tout legislation or push issues. But while he has been relaxing and riding his mountain bike, news outlets have focused on the increasing volatile Iraq insurgency and the mother of a fallen soldier who has camped outside the ranch, questioning the war.

"He's got to give people something to hang on to," says Kirk Jowers, director of the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics and a Washington, D.C., attorney. "It's a tough war to support right now."

Once at 80 percent approval after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush has fallen to 45 percent in a recent Zogby poll. More than half of likely voters polled nationwide said America is on the wrong track. In a recent Associated Press/Ipsos poll, only 37 percent of those surveyed approved of Bush's handling of domestic issues.

"I don't think one speech, or two speeches in this case will turn anything around," says Stephen Hess, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University and a former White House speech writer. "He's hit a bad patch now and whenever that happens, his advisers say, 'Don't just stand there, do something.' Well what can you do? You can make a speech."

With a speech, Hess says, you can restate the message "loudly and clearly and one generally does that in front of audiences that can be sympathetic."

In the end, it plays better in the news media than clearing brush on the ranch in Crawford.

tburr@sltrib.com