A friend of mine recently wrote and asked whether anyone I knew had published a correlation study on the timing of so-called terrorist threats and declines in Bush's public approval ratings? It was a great question.
Well, I was hunting about for an answer when lo and behold it looks like Keith Olbermann has taken on the same issue and found at least 13 times when threats were linked to an effort to stymie Bush's popularity decline...
On Thursday's Countdown, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann did his part to question the NYC subway threat. "Keith said that his staff found 13 circumstances when a brand new terror alert "just happened" to come at a time when there was trouble in the administration. Here's the transcript, with Craig Crawford as guest:
OLBERMANN: Well...I'm going to raise this question as skeptically and bluntly as I can. It's not a question that doubts the existence of terror, nor the threat of terrorism. But we've cobbled together in the last couple of hours a list of at least 13 occasions that -- on which -- whenever there has been news that significantly impacted the White House negatively, there has been some sudden credible terror threat somewhere in this country. How could the coincidence be so consistent?
CRAWFORD: It's, it is a pattern. One of the most memorable was just after the Democratic Convention in the 2004 election, when they talked about the threat to New York and even the [World Bank], and it turned out that was based on intelligence that was three years old, even before 9/11.
There is a pattern here. And I think it's difficult sometimes to take it at face value. But in these moments, when it looks like a crisis, those of us who bring it up get accused of treason. That's what Howard Dean was accused of when he raised that after the Democratic Convention scare alert.
OLBERMANN: About, that was, I think, by the way, number 12 on the list. About the speech, and again, not to question the existence of terrorism, but if a prominent politician takes any issue and seems to be using it as a last line of personal political defense, does history, does our history not teach us, and supposedly the politician, that he risks trivializing the issue, that he risks sounding like Joe McCarthy on communist infiltration?
CRAWFORD: The president has given this speech so many times now. It was a bit stronger in his assertion that we will stay the course until the bitter end, until we get victory. It was a very forceful speech. But in many ways, he just turned up the volume on a broken record
(Note: According to EVAN KOHLMANN, founder of GlobalTerrorAlert.com, the specific New York subway threat that gave rise to Olberman's suspicions originated from New York authorities, not Federal authorities, so it may not be especially applicable)
UPDATED: There's a breaking CNN story here on the latest alert being a hoax. Apparently Evan Kohlmann quoted above was misinformed. According to the CNN story, the city (Mayor Bloomberg) had received information from the FBI about a "specific threat," prompting the heightened subway security. As steviemo notes in the comments section, looks like Bloomberg might take the hit for a bogus threat issued by the FBI--unless, of course, NYC authorities were privy to the bogus nature of the threat.
---snip ---
Republicans at least have good reasons for using this under handed tactic. There's also a study out that posits a positive correlation between 'terror threats' and Bush's popularity. (hat tip to Colton Ross for the link)
Those were the findings of a Cornell University sociologist last fall http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp10_1.pdf.
Ph.D. candidate Robb Willer tracked the 26 times that a government agency increased the threat level for terrorist activity in the United States between February 2001 and May 2004 and mapped those instances to Gallup polls showing Bush's approval ratings during those periods.
The study was published in the September 2004 issue of Current Research in Social Psychology.
"Results showed that terror warnings increased presidential approval ratings consistently," said Willer, who found that Bush's approval rating went up an average of almost three percentage points in the week following each terror warning.
Willer began his study after watching Bush's approval rating leap from 51 percent on September 10, 2001 to 86 percent five days later.
As the folks over at the Yellow Dog wondered....
"So Americans being scared means they like Bush more... Gee, do you think Karl Rove knows about this?"
(cross posted at http://www.delicatemonster.com)