SE Fla Editorial: Americans are Stupid - Bush isn't so bad [View All]

Survey Says

South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
Posted January 2 2007


ISSUE: Bush voted biggest villain.


If one of the last in a spate of year-end polls is even close to being accurate, Americans need to take a very deep breath. And chill. And understand who our enemies really are.

According to an AP-AOL poll looking for the good guy and bad guy of the year, George Bush was overwhelmingly picked as the biggest villain in 2006. Yes, he far outdistanced Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Kim Jong II of North Korea. In the eyes of the Americans involved in that poll, none of those folks came close to being as big a villain as the president of the United States.

It is one thing to disagree, even vehemently, with Bush. The country showed decisively in the last election their disagreement with many of his policies and his conduct of the war. There have been few presidents as unpopular.

But does America really think he is a bigger villain than bin Laden? Or Hussein? Or any of the others?

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Whether people will ever look back at George Bush fondly is very questionable. But making him out as a worse guy than bin Laden or Hussein or Kim Jong II is way over the top.

BOTTOM LINE: Americans need to understand who is really bad.