Wow, now this is really brilliant - why didn't anybody think of this before - an easily quantifiable measure of somebody's worthiness to be president.
The author didn't say what the "leading database" was, nor would I necessarily be able to replicate her experiment (it most likely is password protected and expensive) if I knew, but I can do it on Google, which is more democratic than what I bunch of pundits have to say, anyway.
Only I put a little twist on it - I entered the names of the Democratic candidates, coupled with the word "scary"
Here are the results:
Scary + Hillary Clinton = 829,000
Scary + Barach Obama = 582,000
Scary + John Edwards = 520,000
Scary + Dennis Kucinich = 224,000
Scary + Bill Richardson = 188,000
Scary + Joe Biden = 170,000
Scary + Chris Dodd = 124,000
Scary + Mike Gravel = 102,000
How about that?!? While I was surprised that Dennis Kucinich ranked as more scary than Richardson, Biden or Dodd, it's clear that the Scary Index has validity... the worst Democratic candidate has the highest score on the Scary Index, and the best candidate has the lowest score!
Need any more proof? I'll match up a few pairs of other political figures:
Scary + George Bush = 1,310,000
Scary + Bill Clinton = 838,000
Scary + Ronald Reagan = 480,000
Scary + Jimmy Carter = 366,000
Scary + Richard Nixon - 263,000
Scary + George McGovern - 41,900
Scary + Adolf Hitler - 209,000
Scary + Mahatma Ghandi - 11,800
I think these figures speak for themselves!
I'm very glad that Steve brought this to our attention, whenever I use the Scary Index in the future, I'll be sure to co-credit him with its invention!
BTW, Republican Party loyalists have a very skewed view of how scary some Democratic candidates are... I don't know if the order is any different than the general publics, but the magnitudes are much more extreme.
The Republican National Committee did a Halloween-themed online bit called "Who's the Scariest Democrat." According to
http://ctlocalpolit
Republicans have no sense of proportion. She is not 91 times as scary as Dodd. She's more like 6 or 7 times scarier. Hey, the Google Scary Index wins again!
On Nov 19, 2007 10:56 AM, S. McCabe <blue_meanie_9@yahoo.com > wrote:
Rudy is truly scaryBy Ellen WulfhorstNEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican Rudy Giuliani vows to be tough on terror, chooses advisers who want to bomb Iran and doesn't think pretending to drown prisoners is torture.Add to those views a reputation for being combative, and Giuliani often evokes the word "scary" from opponents who find the tough-guy image that served him so well after the September 11 attacks now a cause for concern as he seeks the U.S. presidency.Type the word "scary" and names of Republican candidates for president into a leading database of articles. The name of the former New York mayor will get the most hits."He is a scary guy," said Jerome Hauer, who ran the city's Office of Emergency Management for Giuliani. "He was probably one of the more divisive mayors the city has ever seen."People in this country should be very frightened of Rudy because he is not going to bring the country together," Hauer added. "Who knows who he'd pick wars with?"When New Yorkers reminisce about Giuliani, they tend to recall his contentious moments -- threatening to pull funding from a museum over a controversial exhibit, disclosing sealed records of an unarmed man killed by police, insulting a city resident over whether ferrets should be pets, trying to place a homeless shelter in the district of a councilman he disliked or surrounding City Hall with barricades and barriers.But voters nationwide, at this stage of the November 2008 presidential contest, seem to be thinking more about his calm and compassion after the deadly attacks in 2001 enough to anoint him the Republican front-runner."What they see is a guy that they heard was superb on 9/11, and he was," said former New York Mayor Ed Koch.But, Koch added: "They don't know him. He's a really smooth, charming person. When you talk to him, you don't become aware from what he says to you of his history in New York City. I honestly believe on 9/10 he couldn't have been elected dogcatcher."Koch said he supported Giuliani twice for mayor but, because of what he sees as his authoritarian and thin-skinned temperament, does no longer.He has a "knee-jerk need to antagonize critics and people he perceives as enemies," said Rob Polner, editor of "America's Mayor: The Hidden History of Rudy Giuliani's New York." "He's perceived as being not only punitive but being a bully, picking on weak targets and being unpredictable."Giuliani's critics take issue with his choice of foreign policy advisers that includes neoconservative Norman Podhoretz, who is outspoken on a need to bomb Iran, and Daniel Pipes, who advocates singling out Muslims at airport security points.Worrisome to them too are Giuliani's calls for a larger U.S. military and his refusal to call waterboarding, which simulates drowning, a form of torture."This is one dangerous man: it's George Bush with brains," wrote Michael Tomasky, editor of the Guardian Online.Online, the blogging community uses similar descriptions."There is a sense Rudy Giuliani isn't just wrong but is genuinely scary. Mitt Romney or Fred Thompson or John McCain are wrong, and they're perceived as putting the country on the wrong track, but Rudy Giuliani is genuinely scary," said Steve Benen, editor of The Carpetbagger Report http://www.reuters.com/article/ politicsNews/ idUSN16413922200 71119?feedType= RSS&feedName=politicsNe ws&rpc=22&sp=true , Stevo
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You know what Hillary's going to do to Rudy?
![]()
We have 3,871 dead soldiers.
If you don't like it, talk to this man.![]()
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