Addressing the popular meme that Barack Obama is weak on national security and should act more like America's daddy, Greg Sargent pointed out yesterday that polls on the subject show precisely the reverse sentiment from the American people:
We now have enough polls to call BS on this. Today's Gallup poll finds Obama's rating on terror has actually inched up since the foiled plot. Today's Quinnipiac poll says that 66% view Obama as a “strong leader.” Yesterday's CNN poll found that 64% like Obama's personality and leadership qualities.
Yesterday's CBS poll found that 57% approve of Obama on terrorism. Still another poll found that 65% have confidence that Obama will protect them from terror. Is that enough yet?
Just in case it's not enough, Pew released a poll today showing that Obama's ratings on dealing with terrorism are higher than on any other single issue at 51 percent. So can we definitively say that the torture wing of the GOP's assault on the president has been a complete failure?
Perhaps the attack strategy hasn't succeeded in making the presidentvulnerable. But even though Obama's downfall may be the main concernof the GOP's torture wing, the larger problem is that this discoursehas affected Americans' willingness to forsake fundamental freedoms inthe name of safety. According to Pew, 58 percent of Americans thinkgovernment policies "haven't gone far enough" to protect the Americanpeople from terrorism -- just in case it's not clear what they mean,only 27 percent think the U.S. has done too much to curtail civilliberties. All that despite our ignorance of what government is doingmost of the time, precisely because they've concealed the nature oftheir surveillance methods.
So yeah, it doesn't look like Dick Cheney has laid a glove on the president himself. But the attacks do seem to be having some effect on scaring the American people into letting the government do whatever they want to "protect" them.
-- A. Serwer
