It might still gain some traction for John Howard & Co. in Australia, at least for the moment, but if Frank Rich writing in the NY Times [reproduced in the IHT] is right, the terror-threat doesn't wash anymore with the American public:
"The results are in for the White House's latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: The era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over.
In each poll released since the foiling of the trans-Atlantic terror plot - Gallup, Newsweek, CBS, Zogby, Pew - President George W. Bush's approval rating remains stuck in the 30s, just as it has been with little letup in the year since Hurricane Katrina stripped the last remaining fig leaf of credibility from his presidency.
While the new Middle East promised by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice remains a delusion, the death rattle of the domestic political order Americans have lived with since the Sept. 11 attacks can be found everywhere: in Americans' unhysterical reaction to the terror plot, in politicians' and pundits' hysterical overreaction to Senator Joseph Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut, even in the ho-hum box-office reaction to Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center."
Read the full Rich op-ed piece here.
"The results are in for the White House's latest effort to exploit terrorism for political gain: The era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over.
In each poll released since the foiling of the trans-Atlantic terror plot - Gallup, Newsweek, CBS, Zogby, Pew - President George W. Bush's approval rating remains stuck in the 30s, just as it has been with little letup in the year since Hurricane Katrina stripped the last remaining fig leaf of credibility from his presidency.
While the new Middle East promised by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice remains a delusion, the death rattle of the domestic political order Americans have lived with since the Sept. 11 attacks can be found everywhere: in Americans' unhysterical reaction to the terror plot, in politicians' and pundits' hysterical overreaction to Senator Joseph Lieberman's defeat in Connecticut, even in the ho-hum box-office reaction to Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center."
Read the full Rich op-ed piece here.
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