To the Editor:
Professor Ronald Edsforth raises some very valid points in his Oct. 10 letter to The Dartmouth "Just the Facts, Please." Most notably and simply that his examples "raise doubts about the correctness of the 'strong support' generalization she [reporter Jessica Spradling] used to frame her own story."
That being said, I believe the he commits precisely the same offense he criticizes the article for -- the evidence he provides grossly fails to support the conclusions he makes.
Edsforth states "Clearly facts like these indicate that public support for the administration is actually quite weak." However the facts he refers to are focused entirely on the Iraq issue. Does he believe that public support and approval of the administration is based entirely on one particular and developing foreign policy towards a single nation? To be fair, it should be noted that the same CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll he references, taken Oct. 3-6, reported President Bush's job approval rating at 67 percent. Quite weak?
While he derides the "strong support" generalization, his criticism seems to be relevant towards only those who disagree with him. How is it that 53 percent of the public favoring ground troops invading Iraq is only a "a small majority," while five sentences later, 54 percent thinking that Congress, not the president, has the final authority for deciding whether we should invade is in fact "a clear majority?" Furthermore, what does this statistic have to do with public support for the Iraqi policy? If the president believed he had the final authority to decide whether to invade Iraq, he probably wouldn't be lobbying so hard for Congress and the Senate's support.The evidence simply does not support the suggestion that "on this issue the public and university professors are of one mind."
