Sunday, July 22, 2007

Pew Survey: Voters Rethinking Their Hatred For Experience?

Check out the graph in this New York Times article summarizing findings from a Pew Research Center poll about Americans' attitudes toward various traits among politicians.

The Times story focuses on the religious aspects of the poll: Will evangelical Christians vote for someone who has been divorced? Can they tolerate a Mormon? Whom would they toss into boiling tar first, an atheist candidate or a Muslim? etc. etc. But I am intrigued--and encouraged--by a poll item the Times doesn't even mention. When voters were asked whether they would be more or less likely to support a candidate who was "a long-time Washington politician," fifteen percent said "less likely," forty-five percent said it would make no difference, and fully thirty-five percent said "more likely." This after three solid decades during which Republican candidates and pundits have tried their damnedest to make "long-time Washington politician" into an insult roughly equivalent to--well, to "atheist Muslim," I guess.

Maybe this is a sign that the sheer addle-pated incompetence of the Bush administration is finally starting to sour voters on the inane "conservative" notion that installing leaders who pride themselves on their ignorance about and hostility toward government will somehow improve the operation of government.

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