Here's the latest from statistically-measured ad populum land: More people blame Bush than Clinton for the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden.

http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=24733

Quote :

"Bush Blamed More Than Clinton for Failure to Capture Bin Laden Views are predictably partisan; independents mostly blame Bush by Lydia Saad GALLUP NEWS SERVICE PRINCETON, NJ -- The recent firestorm over former President Bill Clinton's culpability for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was fueled on Tuesday when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contrasted President Bush's efforts to pursue al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with Clinton's efforts. Clinton has strongly denied various suggestions that his administration missed key opportunities to kill bin Laden and left the Bush administration without a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy. However, Bush -- whom Clinton says did nothing about al-Qaeda for the first eight months of his presidency -- has the bigger image problem with Americans on the issue. According to a recent Gallup Panel survey, the American public puts the primary blame on Bush rather than Clinton for the fact that bin Laden has not been captured. A majority of Americans say Bush is more to blame (53%), compared with 36% blaming Clinton. Clinton's reputation in this matter is far from unblemished, however. A separate question in the Sept. 21-24 survey measures the degree to which each president is blamed for the failure to capture or kill bin Laden. Forty-two percent of Americans believe Clinton deserves either a great deal or a fair amount of blame, while only 32% say he deserves no blame. However, a larger number, 53%, assign a great deal or fair amount of blame to Bush for failing to track down bin Laden. Partisanship in High Gear It is hard to know whether the ongoing war of words -- including a highly publicized outburst by Clinton over the weekend in an interview with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace -- is changing any minds, or merely inciting partisan loyalties. Republicans and Democrats are largely divided into opposing camps on the question of who is more to blame for bin Laden's ability to evade capture: 71% of Republicans say Clinton is more to blame while 83% of Democrats hold Bush more responsible. While a small minority in both cases, Republicans are more than twice as likely to blame Bush as Democrats are to blame Clinton (18% vs. 7%). Clinton's strong advantage among the general public on this question comes more from the fact that political independents are closer to the Democratic side in their attitudes, with a solid majority blaming Bush more than Clinton (58% vs. 31%). Perceptions of the degree to which each president deserves some blame for bin Laden's whereabouts are similarly partisan. The overwhelming majority of Republicans assign a great deal or fair amount of blame to Clinton, while only 24% assign this much blame to Bush. Conversely, 77% of Democrats assign high blame to Bush, versus only 23% blaming Clinton. Again, independents align more closely with the Democrats. Survey Methods These results are based on telephone interviews with 1,010 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Sept. 21-24, 2006, using the Gallup Panel. Respondents were randomly drawn from Gallup's nationally representative household panel, which was originally recruited through random selection methods. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls."

Since I'd argue Osama Bin Laden represents the purest form of ideologically-agreeable evil in our country, I'd say that whichever party makes the best use of tying responsibility for him and his whereabouts to the other is going to maintain or obtain a majority in November. Why? Because you can pretty much get away with blaming most problems on him for one, and you can pretty much get away with building urgency for presenting solutions when invoking his name second. Using "boogeymen" to accomplish policy is the nature of politics.

9/27/2006 11:43:19 AM

capturing him would be far more problematic then outright killing him.

9/27/2006 2:04:21 PM

So instead we let our politicians use him as a cudgel? Or a gavel?

[Edited on September 27, 2006 at 2:11 PM. Reason : ...]

9/27/2006 2:11:14 PM

I was really hoping we could figure out who's going to win this thread.

9/27/2006 4:53:25 PM

osama won since you posted this shit

9/29/2006 12:24:50 AM

Oh? What was the score?

9/29/2006 12:25:16 AM

Why would anyone blame Clinton more than Bush. I bet 90% of people couldn't tell you who Osama was before 9/11, and Bush made far bigger of a deal (understandably so) about Bin Laden than Clinton did.

Bush was the one that said "dead or alive," and we freaking invaded a country because of the doings of Osama. If this poll was take pre-9/11, or if 9/11 never happened, I can see Clinton getting more blame.

9/29/2006 1:05:47 AM

at least clin-ton tried

9/29/2006 1:22:39 AM

Right now the responsibility to capture Bin Laden rests on Bush. When there is a new president the responsibility will fall on them (if he isn't captured in the first week of November ). What does wasting all the effort on who to put the blame on achieve? I guess it will get your guy in office but it won't capture OBL.

9/29/2006 7:20:33 AM

If we could only get politics out of government this country might be a greater place than it already is.

9/29/2006 10:21:11 AM