Highlights — on ‘Initial Response’ to the disaster, Bush personally rates substantially higher than every other option on the percentage of respondents who rated his response “good”. Bush’s ‘job approval’ up 6% in the last month. And they asked specifically about the “blame game” but I’ll let you follow the link for that.

That’s a damn fine interview statement (though I’d love to see the video) — and this is a really good domestic issue for Condi to take point on. It’s one where we’d expect her to be personally angry and it’s one where she’s preaching to a large majority of people who agree with her. The Dems have gone way out on a limb here, and she’s just the one to saw it off for them — and gain domestic policy credibility while she’s doing it. Condi ’08?

QUESTION: Why is it, do you think, that 77 percent of black people (inaudible) Kanye West that George Bush doesn’t care about black people?

SECRETARY RICE: Probably because they’ve heard it from people who weren’t questioned about the assumptions there. Look, I find it very strange to think that people would think the President of the United States would sit deciding who ought to be helped on the basis of color, most especially this President. It’s just — it’s (a) not true and it’s (b) poisonous that somebody would say that. And I hope that people would be challenged on the assumption if they’re going to say it. Now, what evidence is there that this is the case? Why would you say such a thing? What makes you think so? Because you have a President who has cared about minority home ownership. You have a President who has cared about community colleges. You have a President who has increased funding for historically black colleges. You have a President who, under the No Child Left Behind, has increased federal funding dramatically and insisted on standards for children. And the kids who do, by the way, get warehoused and where there’s a gulf between third grade reading and third grade — being in third grade and being able to read at third grade, a lot of those are minority kids.

So I don’t believe it. I don’t know why people say it. And I would hope that people would seriously examine their assumptions.

“Poisonous.” Well said, Condi.

It’s like I wrote earlier today, in the Democratic Party of Howard Dean, everything political is personal — it’s not that my opponent has a different idea how to achieve our common goals, it’s that he hates puppies and motherhood:

John Roberts doesn’t have a different view of the Constitutional separation of powers — he doesn’t “love the American people”. John Ashcroft doesn’t have different ideas of how to keep America safe, he’s “not a patriot”, “a descendant of Joe McCarthy”. Republicans don’t have different ideas for how to make America better — they are evil and I hate them!

(end of shameless self promotion alert)

And this is the chairman of the D.N.C. — the chief spokesman for the Democratic Party.

Even so, I suspect if the poll question had been more blatantly phrased (“Is President Bush a racist?”) the number would have fallen to the hard-core 15% who are represented by MoveOn. As phrased, the question could be read as whether the President cares about black people as such — which could be answered “no” with a weaker implication than the other would carry.