Public Says Bush Needs to Pay Heed to Weak Economy (NYT/CBS/SaveTheRats poll)

The New York Times ^ | 10/07/2002 | ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

[Pokey78]

[Texas Eagle]

Public Says Bush Needs to Pay Heed to Weak Economy

Poppycock and balderdash. The "public" don't know jack. The "public" is too busy looking for open parking spots at Wal-Mart and Home Depot.

[2rightsleftcoast]

Please freep the CNN poll. Bottom right of page.

[finnman69]

And what would the public have the president do with Dasshole in charge blocking tax cuts.

[Laverne]

Bush will deliver his address tomorrow night, on tuesday morning he will deliver to the congress...or through the house, another economic stimulus package....he is on top of it, just waiting for the NYTimes to try to undermine him so he can undermine them instead. At least thats my thinking.

[churchillbuff]

President Bush and Congressional leaders are spending too much time talking about Iraq while neglecting problems at home,

I'm a Reaganite conservative, and I agree. We need talk about real tax cuts --- now. Bush should be asking for an election mandate to get the dead weight of high taxes and oppressive regulatiosn off this economy so it will start growing the way it did when Reagan cut taxes and regs. Instead, all we hear is Saddam, Saddam, Saddam. They can kill Saddam and it won't matter much to yours truly if the socialistic level of taxes and regulations here ar home is left untouched. Freepers seem so concerned about tyranny in Iraq but don't want to talk about oppressive government spending, taxing and regulating here at home. Flame away. I know, I'm anti-American - a subversive - for saying such things. Guess that's the price of following the Reaganite philosophy.

[Callahan]

What a transparent joke of a poll. I love the quote from Gladys, the "independent" who just happens to live in Congressman McDermott's (D-Iraq)district. The NY Times is going to have to do better than this.

[Common Tator]

The only relevant question is who is better equiped in your judgement to handle the economy.. Democrats or Republicans.

If Democrats could have won that auestion, it would have been the featured question in any CBC NYT poll.

The question isn't should your spouse pay more attention to you, that always gets the same answer. The question is do you want a new spouce.

They didn't ask that... now did they?

[luv2ndamend]

"of 668 adults nationwide"

That seems like a small sampling.

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[MichiganConservative]

don't they call this sort of thing "talking down the economy" when it's convenient for them?

That darn economy, why if Daschle doesn't give it mouth-to-mouth soon, it could just go away. You could wake up tomorrow and be in a barter system!

[Mike Darancette]

This poll, conducted by telephone Thursday through Saturday, was taken of 668 adults nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

Weekend poll using "Adults" not even Registered voters. Try again,

[goodnesswins]

Ya know....between this "poll" and the article on the dockworkers salaries being between $100,000 and $120,000 - I think the NY Times is just blathering to the Lefties, who must be the only ones reading the rag....

[Howlin]

What has HAPPENED to Howell Raines? Has he just decided he'll go down at the guy at the helm when the NYT lost the last shred of credibility that it had?

[Wild Irish Rogue]

" Geoff Crooks, 44, an independent who lives in Lincoln, Neb., said: "We are paying way too much attention to Iraq."

"Meanwhile, the stock market has fallen 25 percent and tons of people are unemployed — including myself," said Mr. Crooks, who had worked as a travel consultant."

Oh, where to start.The travel industry has been decimated by 9/11. Maybe Mr. Independent should take his beef, to,oh I don't know,maybe Osama bin Laden!!! So, Bush tries to rid the world of terrorists, so people will feel safer flying again-but,that's not good enough. I wish one pollster would ask-what exactly do you want the President to do-besides waving that magic economic wand that the Dems seem to think exists somewhere in the WH-if only Bush would use it!

[ladyinred]

Re;Talking down the economy. Right, when then candidate Bush warned of a recession coming, the RATS went nuts. They of course wanted it to be a secret until he was President so they could blame him. Love how they are doing a replay of Clinton/Gore in '92. No original ideas obviously.

[MJY1288]

"This poll, conducted by telephone Thursday through Saturday, was taken of 668 adults nationwide"

They forgot to mention that all 668 were unemployed

[Numbers Guy]

What has HAPPENED to Howell Raines? Has he just decided he'll go down at the guy at the helm when the NYT lost the last shred of credibility that it had?

Classic "ends justifies the means". He sincerely believes that war with Iraq would be a mistake, so he is willing to destroy his paper's credibility to achieve his goal.

The reporting on this poll do not coincide with the actual numbers. Approval for an attack on Iraq hasn't changed since July? Heck, it's been overwhelming all along, yet the Times is trying to paint this as a negative.

What the Times should have said if they had any credibility: "In spite of desperate attempts to undermine the President from left-wing Congressmen, Bush I appeasers, and story after false story in the New York Times, support for war with Iraq remains remarkably strong."

[Nick Danger]

OK, journalism class. We have this poll here and our job is to tell people what it all means.

Iraq has been in the news, and this poll shows that 67% of the people approve of taking military action against Saddam Hussein and removing him from power. Which of you would like to try to characterize that poll result for our readers?

The poll found that despite the emphasis by Mr. Bush since Labor Day on the need to move against Saddam Hussein, support for such a policy has not changed appreciably since the summer.

Despite Bush's emphasis? Has not changed appreciably? We're talking about two-thirds approval here, and you're making it sound like Bush is having trouble getting support for this policy. Is that really an honest way to characterize this?

Enough on that, we have a number of interviewees here, and some quotes that we can put in the article. Who would like to select some quotes that they think express the gist of what these various interviewees said?

"Bush is spending way too much time focusing on Iraq instead of the economy, and he's doing it as a political move," said Gladys Steele, 42, a homemaker from Seattle who is a political independent, in a follow-up interview yesterday. "He thinks keeping us fearful about going to war will distract us from how bad the economy is."

"There is no balance right now between finding solutions to our domestic problems and our foreign affairs," said Michael Chen, 30, an independent who works as a sales manager in Beaverton, Ore. "No one is talking about how to solve the economic downfall."

Geoff Crooks, 44, an independent who lives in Lincoln, Neb., said: "We are paying way too much attention to Iraq."

"Meanwhile, the stock market has fallen 25 percent and tons of people are unemployed — including myself," said Mr. Crooks, who had worked as a travel consultant.

"I hate to say this because I'm a Republican, but the economy was better when Clinton was in office,' said Donna Doolittle, 42, a benefits coordinator who works at a hospital in Holiday, Fla. "Maybe interest rates are low now, but health insurance is going up; there are layoffs."

That certainly sounds gloomy. Don't the poll results say that a majority of the people rated the economy as the same, or better, than it was? Why would you select only quotes from interviewees who thought it was worse? Don't you think that misleads the reader?

Democrats have hoped that concern about the economy would allow them to turn this election into a referendum on Republican fiscal policies, in a way that would sweep out of office a large number of Republicans

Was that your reason for selecting only those quotes, or is this some new paragraph telling the reader about the Democrats' hopes? Where is the paragraph describing the Republicans' hopes?

Over the summer, Democrats had hoped that the turmoil on Wall Street and reports of corporate malfeasance would give them an issue to use against Republicans.

That's another paragraph about the Democrats' hopes. It's almost as if you are writing this from the point of view of a Democratic Party official. Is there really nothing in here about how this looks from the Republicans' point of view, something that describes their hopes for this election?

{{{ crickets }}}

[DrDeb]

A predictably distorted NYT poll -- a blatant attempt to help the RATs shift the public debate now that we're within 4 weeks of the election.

NOTE:
1.) This poll sampled a mere 668 people resulting in a +/- 4 margin of error (CREDIBLE polls feature a margin of error between +/- 2 and +/- 3).

2.) Even with its biases, the poll still asserts that almost 70% of respondents favor an attack on Iraq (a majority still support even with large numbers of US casualties)

3.) The poll highlights the obvious: of course people are concerned about the economy; however, who do they BLAME and plan to hold accountable for the problem -- oops, the question(s) was never asked! However, in a rather telling response to a question that was asked, pollees indicated that THEIR reps were doing just fine(doesn't sound like much of a voter revolt to me?!).

4.) The poll supposedly determined that Bush should do more about the economy: Did NYT ask the pollees about their assessment of Congress? Daschle, et al? Of course not!

5.) The summary neglected to note that the poll places the President's overall approval numbers in the 60s and well within the margin of error from the previous NYT poll; instead, the summary focused exclusively on the President's 'economic' approval number without putting it into an overall context -- purposely misleading (of course!).

6.) The summary only included comments from respondents who expressed NEGATIVE views -- with respondents giving the President a 60-something approval rating, at least ONE person had to have made a positive comment.

I could go on, and on, and on; however, it's well past my bed time!