New Poll Finds Half of U.S. Needs Killing

[Eugen Leitl]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/politics/27poll.html?ei=5094&en=b93f38e07b4
d88d0&hp=&ex=1138424400&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

New Poll Finds Mixed Support for Wiretaps
David Scull for The New York Times

President Bush at his news conference Thursday. The latest polls show that
public opinion on Mr. Bush's surveillance program is still unresolved.

    *
      E-Mail This
    * Printer-Friendly
    * Reprints
    * Save Article

Article Tools Sponsored By
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER
Published: January 27, 2006

Americans are willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight
terrorism, but are concerned that the aggressive antiterrorism programs
championed by the Bush administration are encroaching on civil liberties,
according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

In a sign that public opinion about the trade-offs between national security
and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to
questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied
significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the
importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on
its terms.

The poll, conducted as President Bush defended his surveillance program in the
face of criticism from Democrats and some Republicans that it is illegal,
found that Americans were willing to give the administration some latitude for
its surveillance program if they believed it was intended to protect them.
Fifty-three percent of the respondents said they supported eavesdropping
without warrants "in order to reduce the threat of terrorism."

The results suggest that Americans' view of the program depends in large part
on whether they perceive it as a bulwark in the fight against terrorism, as
Mr. Bush has sought to cast it, or as an unnecessary and unwarranted
infringement on civil liberties, as critics have said.

In one striking finding, respondents overwhelmingly supported e-mail and
telephone monitoring directed at "Americans that the government is suspicious
of;" they overwhelmingly opposed the same kind of surveillance if it was aimed
at "ordinary Americans."

Mr. Bush, at a White House press conference yesterday, twice used the phrase
"terrorist surveillance program" to describe an operation in which the
administration has eavesdropped on telephone calls and other communications
like e-mail that it says could involve operatives of Al Qaeda overseas talking
to Americans. Critics say the administration could conduct such surveillance
while still getting prior court approval, as spelled out in a 1978 law
intended to guard against governmental abuses.

The findings came in a poll conducted as Mr. Bush prepares to deliver his
fifth State of the Union address on Tuesday. It found that Mr. Bush will face
a nation that has grown sour on Washington and skeptical that he will be able
to achieve significant progress in health care, the economy, the Iraq war and
the cost of prescription drugs for older patients before he leaves office in
three years.

The poll also signaled concern for Republicans as they prepare to defend their
control of the House and the Senate in midterm elections this November.
Investigations into Congressional corruption are taking a toll as the
elections approach: 61 percent of Americans now hold an unfavorable view of
Congress, the highest in 10 years.

This finding holds particular peril for Republicans as the party that has been
in charge. More than half of the respondents said they believed that most
members of Congress would exchange votes for money or favors.

Republicans were seen as more likely to be unduly influenced by lobbyists. And
the Republican Party is now viewed unfavorably by 51 percent of the nation,
its worst rating since Mr. Bush took office. By contrast, 53 percent said they
held a favorable view of Democrats.

The telephone poll was conducted with 1,229 adults, starting Friday and ending
Wednesday. Its margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage
points.

The poll found that Americans were to a large extent perplexed as they weighed
conflicting forces: the need presented by Mr. Bush to take extraordinary
action to fight terrorism, and a historical aversion to an overly intrusive
government.

The poll found that 53 percent of Americans approved of Mr. Bush's authorizing
eavesdropping without prior court approval "in order to reduce the threat of
terrorism"; 46 percent disapproved. When the question was asked stripped of
any mention of terrorism, 46 percent of those respondents approved, and 50
percent said they disapproved.

At the same time, 64 percent said they were very or somewhat concerned about
losing civil liberties as a result of antiterrorism measures put in place by
Mr. Bush since the attacks of Sept. 11. And respondents were more likely to be
concerned that the government would enact strong antiterrorism laws that
excessively restrict civil liberties than they were that the government would
fail to enact antiterrorism laws.

The poll was conducted just as the White House commenced an elaborate campaign
to defend the surveillance program, and thus may have been too early to offer
a full measure of that campaign's effectiveness. There were no measurable
changes in the poll findings from one day to the next.

The findings, and follow-up interviews with some participants, clearly suggest
that Mr. Bush has an opportunity to make the dispute over the program play to
his political advantage. He has been pointing to the threat of another
terrorist attack to justify the eavesdropping program and is trying, for the
third election in a row, to suggest that he and his party are more aggressive
about protecting the nation than are Democrats.

"Say they're targeting someone in Al Qaeda outside the country, and that
person then calls someone in the United States about a plot or something
really bad: I don't have a problem with that phone being monitored," Debbie
Viebranz, 51, a Republican from Ohio, said in a follow-up interview. "But I
don't think they should do it for no reason."

Donnis Wells, 69, a Republican from Florence, Miss., said: "I don't think
civil liberties are the more important thing we need to handle right now. I
think we need to protect our people."

Still, interviews reflected clear apprehension about the program. "If there is
a warrant and done by the courts, I would agree," said Robert Ray, 54, an
independent from Kentucky. "But they're trying to do it without using the
courts. I just don't trust them."

In the poll, 70 percent of respondents said they would not be willing to
support governmental monitoring of the communications of "ordinary Americans";
68 percent said they would be willing to support such monitoring of "Americans
the government is suspicious of."

Beyond surveillance, the poll found that Americans hold unfavorable views of
the president and the Republican-controlled Congress as Mr. Bush prepares to
give his State of the Union speech. Americans, while declaring themselves
generally optimistic about the next three years under Mr. Bush, do not expect
him to accomplish very much in that time.

When Mr. Bush leaves office, respondents said, the deficit will be larger than
it is today, the elderly will be being paying more for prescription drugs, and
the economy and the health care system will be the same as today, or worse.

Mr. Bush is viewed favorably by 42 percent of the respondents, statistically
the same as in the last Times/CBS News poll, in early December, a lackluster
rating that could hamper his ability to rally public opinion behind his agenda
and push legislation through a divided Congress. Beyond that, nearly
two-thirds of the country thinks the nation is on the wrong track, a level
that has historically proved to be a matter of concern for a party in power.

A majority said they were dissatisfied with the way Mr. Bush was managing the
economy and the war in Iraq. Public approval for his handling of the campaign
against terrorism, once one of his greatest political strengths, has rebounded
somewhat from last fall, but remains well below where it was for the first two
years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Most strikingly, the poll found abundant evidence of public unhappiness with
Congress. While it is risky to draw conclusions about Congressional elections
from national measurements of discontent . for example, more than half of all
Americans said they were satisfied with the job their member of Congress was
doing . the findings underscored the tough electoral environment that has led
some analysts to predict significant Republican losses this fall.

The corruption investigations appear to account for a lot of the
dissatisfaction. Nearly 80 percent of respondents said that the kind of
influence-peddling revelations that have emerged in the investigation of the
lobbyist Jack Abramoff reflected the "way things work in Congress" and were
not isolated incidents. More than 50 percent said most members of Congress
"accept bribes or gifts that affect their votes."

"It seems like the integrity of Congress members in the last few years has
just gone to pot," said Donald Pertuis, 54, an independent voter from Hot
Springs, Ark. Mr. Pertuis added: "In the last 20 years, greed has accelerated.
People expect more, I suppose, and want to work less."

Marjorie Connelly, Marina Stefan and Megan Thee contributed reporting for this
article.

--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820            http://www.ativel.com
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]