"Incompetent," "good," "idiot," "liar," "Christian," "honest," "arrogant," "strong," "integrity," and "ass."

Those are words to describe President Bush, in rank order, according to a recent Pew poll.

The link is to a New Republic article by Ryan Lizza, who goes on to talk about Senator Feingold's censure effort. Read the details. Here's the conclusion:

[T]he partisans on the left cheering Feingold appear to have both the policy and the politics wrong. Censure is meaningless. Changing the FISA law is the way to address Bush's overreach. And the only way for Democrats to change FISA is for them to take back the Senate. This week, Feingold's censure petition has made that goal just a little bit more difficult to achieve. What an ass.

Via Scott Lemieux, who thinks Lizza is expressing "TNR center-right contrarianism at its most vacuous." Why? Because if you think it's politically damaging to censure the President -- per Lemieux -- you ought also to be afraid to put stronger, more explicit limits in th FISA law. But I think Lizza's point is that censure is just blowing off steam, incurring political damage without changing anything. Playing it carefully now, in Lizza's view, would help the Democrats win over Congress in the '06 elections, at which point they could amend the statute and have a real effect. Lemieux, nevertheless, asks "And if the Democrats believe that he was breaking the law, why on earth shouldn't he be censured?" I don't quite think he's the best person to be deciding who's "vacuous."