Brendan Nyhan brings some information on the Dick Cheney issue:
While it's true that Cheney is wildly unpopular, he's actually not any more unpopular than President Bush at this point. For instance, the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll (March 9-11) has job approval for Bush at 37 percent and Cheney at 34 percent. In part, that's a reflection of the fact that President Bush's approval is heavily concentrated among conservatives, who at this point may like Cheney more than Bush. More importantly, Bush is the most unpopular president at this point in his term since Harry Truman in 1951. It would be hard for Cheney to do much worse.
I didn't know that. Cheney's historically been less popular than Bush, so I assumed that as Bush sunk into the thirties Cheney would dip down into the twenties. Apparently, though, about a third of the country is composed of GOP dead-enders who won't turn on either man come what may. The larger point stands. Cheney -- and, it seems, Bush -- have dropped down to pathetic levels of unpopularity and there's no reason for political timidity whatsoever in responding to attacks they level.
UPDATE: Haggai points out that a New York Times poll has Cheney at a ridiculous 18 percent.
UPDATE II: In update to his post, Nyhan notes that there's a question-wording difference. The Times asked about favorability whereas the other poll was about job approval. The Bush-Cheney gap appears to exist in favorability questions, but increasingly not in job approval ones.
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Heads in the Sand
I think the magic missing ingredient is contempt. This can come in different varieties: sneering contempt (Cheney himself is a master of that), or mocking ridicule.
It comes down to something they teach in creative writing class. You need to SHOW something, not just TELL it. The Democrats need to SHOW, in the way they talk about Bush and company, they they have absolutely no respect for him and his administration.
Posted by Jim W | March 13, 2007 9:42 AM