Political misdirection: What better way to deflect attention away from the Scooter than to nominate another Italian wingnut to the Supreme Court? Hail, Scalito! But the Libby indictment goes to the ethics question, and most people just aren’t buying the “cleaning up government and bringing morality back to the White House” load of malarkey.
From National Journal’s Polltrack (edited):
This morning’s Supreme Court announcement overshadowed much of the buzz about Friday’s indictment in the CIA leak case, but two new polls suggest that the matter could leave bad feelings lingering in the public sphere.
President Bush, like many politicians before him, campaigned on cleaning up government and bringing morality back to the White House, but a new ABC News/Washington Post survey suggests he hasn’t done a better job than his predecessors. A 46-percent plurality said the “overall level of ethics and honesty in the federal government” has fallen since Bush became president; 37 percent said it’s stayed the same and just 15 percent said it’s risen.
Nearly two-thirds rated Bush’s own handling of ethics in government as fair or poor, and just 34 percent rated them positively — but that’s roughly on par with former President Bill Clinton’s level in January 2000 and former President Ronald Reagan’s in November 1988, according to the analysis.
The ABC/Post survey put Bush’s overall approval at 39 percent, 3 points lower than its September number; CNN/Gallup/USA Today gauged the split at 41/56. Both of those numbers are statistically even with the 42/55 measure a few days before the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on five charges related to the CIA leak investigation.
As for the Libby case specifically, the ABC/Post poll found the public in a harsh mood. Nearly seven in 10 said the charge against Cheney’s adviser was a serious crime, and a majority (55 percent) also said it points to broader ethics problems in the Bush administration. Fifty-five percent said Bush himself didn’t do anything wrong in connection to the case, however, and 44 percent let Cheney off the hook as well.
As usual, the question remains about what effect these numbers will have at the polls in 2006 and beyond. A majority of respondents told Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (D) pollsters that “reform and change” better described Democrats than Republicans — but the GOP came out ahead on “know what they stand for.” The parties were tied on “creating prosperity.”
