By the numbers

Regular readers know I don't put much stock in polls but this one is worth mentioning because of the somewhat contradictory responses.

Public opinion is about evenly split over whether or not Bush is honest and this is significant.

The drop in the number of people who see Bush as honest was strongest among middle-aged Americans as well as suburban women, a key voting group in the 2004 election.

Oddly, although the split here is even, "the portion of people who view his confidence as arrogance has increased from 49 percent in January to 56 percent now."

I would have thought those numbers would have been more in line with each other. Also interesting is the numbers on the Iraq occupation.

Midwesterners and young women and men with a high school education or less were most likely to abandon Bush on his handling of Iraq in the last six months.

These of course are the people most likely to have soldiers in the family who are on the front lines in the occupation. This perhaps shows that you can take an overeducated view in making an analysis of this folly while ignoring the more pragmatic aspects - namely, leaving the academic considerations aside, it's simply not working.