Will it matter after the weekend, or after the nightly news shows bring even more graphic footage from Iraq into our living rooms?
There have been some diaries about the CNN/TIME Poll; it's now posted to Polling Report so you can see for yourself the questions asked and the responses. For example:
Time/CNN Poll conducted by Harris Interactive.
April 8, 2004. N=1,005 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3.1 (total sample).
"Based on the information available to the Bush Administration before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, do you think the Bush Administration did or did not do all that could be expected to prevent the terrorist attacks?"
Did Did Not Not Sure
ALL 48 40 12
Republicans 74 18 8
Independents 45 45 10
Democrats 35 52 13
Look at the independents. That's why Condi's testimony was fairly characterized as a wash by the media, even if Condi slightly outpolls Clarke on style points. But pay special attention to these numbers:
Bush job approval
Approve Disapprove
AP-Ipsos (April 5-7) 48 50
Fox (April 6-7) 49 44
Pew (April 1-4) 43 37
Zogby (April 1-4) 47 53 (Zogby uses excellent/good and fair/poor)
CBS ( Mrch 30 -April 1) 49 44
(No transcript yet, but) the same CNN/Time poll, according to Bill Schneider, has Bush at less than 50% approval as well [editor's note, by DemFromCT] 49 47 reported this afternoon by Lou Dobbs. So regardless of how Condi's Rorschach test appearance appears to you, the bottom line is that it has not helped insulate Bush's numbers from Iraq or the rest of the real world.
As to the longer term effect of Condi's testimony, the WSJ, that bastion of liberalism, writes:
A month before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, President Bush was advised that the Federal Bureau of Investigation saw indications that al Qaeda operatives had made preparations to hijack airliners inside the U.S.
The warning to Mr. Bush came to light yesterday during National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the independent commission investigating the attacks. "The FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking," the warning read, according to a declassified portion of the report read by commission member Bob Kerrey.
Intelligence officials presented the document, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States," to Mr. Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, while he was vacationing at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Ms. Rice insisted that the report lacked any specific information about where or when a hijacking might occur, and that most of it was analysis of past al Qaeda plots and intelligence indicating a desire to strike inside the U.S. Several Democratic commissioners said they didn't accept her characterization of the report, and are pressing the White House to declassify it fully.
Ms. Rice's nearly three-hour appearance before the commission was fraught with election-year implications for President Bush. It contained several tense exchanges with Democratic commissioners who sought to play up what they portrayed as White House mistakes.
While the existence of the Aug. 6 report had been previously reported, the specific FBI warning it contained hadn't been disclosed. The notion that Mr. Bush himself was alerted to possible hijackings raised anew the question of whether the president was sufficiently engaged -- an issue that the commission is likely to probe when he and Vice President Dick Cheney testify before it, probably this month. Democrats repeatedly hammered Ms. Rice with the idea that if the White House had pushed intelligence agencies harder, enough information might have turned up to prevent the attacks by al Qaeda operatives on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that killed nearly 3,000.(...)
The Aug 6 document has not yet been released, but if and when it is, it will be that and the 9/11 Commission's report that matters far more than Condi's 3 hours under the glare of the TV lights. And (as Bill Schneider also mentioned) if the Commmision's report is unanimous, it will be tough to spin as partisan election-year politics.
Condi has failed her Master (because her job was to save his), and substance will in the end trump style. And we'll have the Jersey girls to thank for that when it happens, whether or not that was their intent.