American Public Still Smarter Than You Think

AMERICAN PUBLIC STILL SMARTER THAN YOU THINK....There's a considerable amount of fascinating data in the latest New York Times/CBS poll, but for now I'll just highlight this question:

77% of the public wants us to leave Iraq within 24 months. Good job, public! By way of comparison, I was at a super-secret LA blogger get-together on Sunday and asked a tableful of liberal bloggers how long they'd be willing to extend a withdrawal from Iraq if the pullout timetable were credible. I got a couple of answers of two years and a whole bunch of head nods. So even fire-breathing liberals are willing to allow 24 months to give the Maliki government some breathing space and the generals time to withdraw safely.

In other poll news, one-third of Americans continue to believe that Saddam Hussein was "personally involved" in 9/11. Sheesh. On the other hand, this is down from 51% five years ago, which I suppose is a good sign. Similarly, one-third of Americans correctly guessed that Shiites were the majority group in Iraq. I'll bet those were different thirds, though.