For all the hand-wringing over Values being the pivotal factor in this year’s election, Bob Herbert reminds us of the real reason Bush was reelected:
I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election’s outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush’s supporters believe the U.S. has come up with “clear evidence” that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president’s supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.
This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.
Herbert is right, of course. But he could’ve go one step further to remind us why we’re all so stupid – the free ride his paper, amongst others gave the Bush administration in the run-up to the war. And while I do see occasional splotches of blue sky between the more frequent clouds, I’ll believe the media is actually doing its job when they start calling this administration’s lies for what they are.