A Welcome Bump In The Polls
We’ll take the good news where we can get it as this long, brutal summer continues:
The arrest of terror suspects in London has helped buoy President Bush to his highest approval rating in six months and dampen Democratic congressional prospects to their lowest in a year.
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, support for an unnamed Democratic congressional candidate over a Republican one narrowed to 2 percentage points, 47%-45%, among registered voters. Over the past year, Democrats have led by wider margins that ranged up to 16 points.
Now 42% of Americans say they approve of the job Bush is doing as president, up 5 points since early this month. His approval rating on handling terrorism is 55%, the highest in more than a year.
The boost may prove to be temporary, but it was evidence of the continuing political power of terrorism.
The news comes just in time to directly contradict our ol’ pal Frank Rich:
THE results are in for the White House’s latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: the era of Americans fearing fear itself is over.
In each poll released since the foiling of the trans-Atlantic terror plot – Gallup, Newsweek, CBS, Zogby, Pew – George W. Bush’s approval rating remains stuck in the 30s, just as it has been with little letup in the year since Katrina stripped the last remaining fig leaf of credibility from his presidency. While the new Middle East promised by Condi Rice remains a delusion, the death rattle of the domestic political order we’ve lived with since 9/11 can be found everywhere: in Americans’ unhysterical reaction to the terror plot, in politicians’ and pundits’ hysterical overreaction to Joe Lieberman’s defeat in Connecticut, even in the ho-hum box-office reaction to Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center.
Well, the WTC movie is doing pretty well, Bush is in the 40s, and the only people hysterically overreacting to the Lieberman defeat are the Lamont supporters who realize he’s going to lose in November. As to Americans’ unhysterical reaction to the terror plot, when have Americans ever reacted hysterically to terror? We didn’t on 9/11, and we won’t, now. That hardly makes the plot – or terrorism itself – less real.
Rich is becoming so tiresome that one suspects even he is wearying of his little dog-and-pony show at this point…
How is that contradictory? The USA Today/Gallup poll came out the day after Rich’s article, and the polls Rich cited weren’t false. I think you’re stretching here, man. To emphasize this one poll over all of the others and say that all of the others are wrong…..well, that’s pretty selective.
When it comes to keeping America safe, America knows Bush is the man
Everyone knows I hate polls. They are basically useless and created to makeup news. Yet for another consecutive poll, the first being CNN, which has Bush’s approval rating at 42 percent, USA Today now has him at the same level. USA Today su…
Fargus, if you can’t stretch a little to slam Frank Rich, than I don’t know if life is worth living.
In all seriousness, Rich’s point is that we were somehow intimidated by a culture of fear from Karl Rove post-9/11 and we’ve now broken out from it – well, that’s typical Rich baloney. We never lived in a culture of fear – there’s a difference between fear and determination, and Rich is either to ignorant (or too consumed by partisan hatred) to know the difference…
Usa 2006: il GOP cresce nei sondaggi
Si riduce, fino a quasi scomparire, il vantaggio dei Democratici nell’ultimo sondaggio Gallup/USA Today in vista delle elezioni di mid-term per il rinnovo del Congresso. Il GOP, che alla fine di giugno era dietro di 16 punti percentuali (38% contro 5…
Fargus, to be fair, I think there are actually two polls out there with Bush’s approval at 42%. I don’t know which two, but I remember seeing at the Corner this morning.
In any case, I’m with Mark. Frank Rich is definitely not worth defending on any count. And I’m more than a little tired of hearing about how the White House is “exploiting terrorism for political gain.” Yes, and Iraq was all about oil. Wake me up when there are some arguments being made.
cnn, usa today, rassmussen-all have him at least at 42% or better.
There is not a poll in the past week that has him below 40.
Clearly Rich has been doing a ton of research before he writes his own beliefs as fact.
People always seem to forget that Rich’s claim to fame was as a drama critic for many years on Broadway. He has no political expertise, either in reporting or opinion – writing. He’s the perfect example of the Peter Principle in operation at the NYT – no prior experience in the field in which you’ll be writing “expert opinions” on? Hey, no problem.
of course if it is fair to distirt polls, a conservative could argue that Lamont is suffering the same numbers with his ‘approval rating remains stuck in the 30s’.
Actually lamont is at 40-41% in CT. Bush is actually doing better than he is.
Very interesting blog, i have added it to my fovourites, greetings