Cockeyed Optimists

You know it's getting bad for the White House when they are taking comfort in numbers like these:

Administration officials believe much of the public is still eager for victory and open to persuasion if the president can make the case that he has made progress. They took heart in a survey last week by RT Strategies, a bipartisan polling firm, that found that 49 percent of Americans favor bringing troops home when only "specific goals and objectives" are met, 30 percent want a fixed timetable for pulling out and 16 percent support immediate withdrawal. The middle 30 percent, they figure, is the real political battleground.

OK, let's break this down:

1. Immediate withdrawal is the same as a timetable, only the time is now. So let's just add the two together and get: 46% favor some kind of fixed timetable.
2. While the Washington Post doesn't give the margin of error of the RT Strategies poll, let's be generous and assume a very large sample size with a margin of error of 3%. We now have a statistical dead heat between those advocating a timetable, and those advocating conditional withdrawal.
3. Withdrawl based on "specific goals and objectives" is the most abstract way of phrasing the Bush "plan". Given that solid majorities for some time have disagreed with Bush's handling of the war, it's hard to see how this poll refutes that fact.

So, what we have here is an administration taking comfort in the fact that they're breaking even in a poll that underestimates the real disapproval that people have to their policy. Ouch.