New poll from wapo/ABC: Bush less ethical than Clinton

The Washington Post in conjunction with ABC News has completed a new national poll regarding the ethics of the White House in the wake of the Scooter Libby indictments. The overall trends probably won't come as any surprise to anyone on either side of the aisle, but there was one little tidbit buried a few paragraphs down which caught my attention.

A majority of Americans say the indictment of senior White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby signals broader ethical problems in the Bush administration, and nearly half say the overall level of honesty and ethics in the federal government has fallen since President Bush took office, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News survey.

The poll, conducted Friday night and yesterday, found that 55 percent of the public believes the Libby case indicates wider problems "with ethical wrongdoing" in the White House, while 41 percent believes it was an "isolated incident." And by a 3 to 1 ratio, 46 percent to 15 percent, Americans say the level of honesty and ethics in the government has declined rather than risen under Bush.

In the aftermath of the latest crisis to confront the White House, Bush's overall job approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC polls. Barely a third of Americans -- 34 percent -- think Bush is doing a good job ensuring high ethics in government, which is slightly lower than President Bill Clinton's standing on this issue when he left office.

The Clinton comparison should really open up the eyes of people who still had a desire to support this administration but were on the fence. I have often opined that Bill Clinton was, in terms of job performance, one of the best presidents we've had in my lifetime. He led the nation through eight years of nearly uninterrupted peace, turned around an economy that was staggering under the policies of Reagan and Poppy Bush, and left us with a budget surplus. (Long since squandered, sadly.) But the one area where he was definitely open for criticism was in the area of ethics and honesty. While I'm sure he was hardly unique in his peccadilloes, he was certainly the president who was caught in the brightest spotlight for ethical and moral lapses. For Bush to rank lower than Clinton in an evaluation of ethics (without even being caught in any sort of infidelity) really paints a complete picture of the current president - incompetence amplified by ethical shortcomings, dishonesty and corruption.