http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7946Are We Really Back to Debating What the Meaning of "Is" Is?
by David Sirota | Jun 6 2007
The New York Times has this interesting nugget today:
"The Bush administration’s efforts to thwart terrorism at home have created a fissure among the three leading Democratic presidential candidates, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton coming under attack for saying that America is safer now than before 9/11...'I believe we are safer than we were,' Mrs. Clinton said...'I think the vast majority of Democratic primary voters, and Americans, would agree with Senator Clinton,' said a campaign spokesman."
Whether we actually ARE safer or not is not what's interesting about this particular excerpt - what's interesting is that the Clinton campaign is now asserting that the majority of Americans BELIEVE we are safer, and not really just the majority, but the VAST majority. I say this is "interesting" because it comes from what is widely known to be a very poll-driven campaign team - a campaign team that knows the actual data says precisely the opposite.
According to a CBS News poll a little less than a year ago, 84 percent of Americans say they feel less safe or only as safe as they did before 9/11. This is not a small majority - this actually IS the vast majority saying they unequivocally disagree with Clinton's assessment. That probably has something to do with the fact that by a 4-to-1 margin, Americans believe the Iraq War, which Clinton voted for, has made the country less safe.
And by the way, this data isn't buried. It's screams itself from CBS's website after a five second google search:
Look, we can have a debate about whether the country is or is not more or less safe since 9/11. But it's pretty clear we cannot have a debate about whether the country BELIEVES we are more or less safe since 9/11 - it doesn't, and trying to debate that point is vaguely reminiscent of trying to debate what the meaning of "is" is.
This actually gets to the point that bothers me most about the Clinton campaign (well, almost "the most" - her hiring a union busting corporate PR consultant to run her campaign, her seeming lack of care that she is surrounded by advisers tied to a murderous Colombian government, and her support for the Iraq War I guess qualify for that "most bothersome" slot, but I digress): I always get that feeling they think they are so smart, and that everyone is stupid to fall for the utterly predictable, utterly Clintonian tactics of basically trying to devolve every debate over real issues into another version of a meaningless and transparent debate over what the meaning of "is" is.
It's that same feeling you'd get if you met someone in a field on a crystal clear day, and they pointed up straight at the sun and said, "Of course it's overcast, can't you see that?" You'd think they thought you were either blind or a complete idiot, and that probably would piss you off - as it should.