The C-Word

I'm not sure that "likeability" translates into approval. Like, does it mean would like to go out to dinner with, but not necessarily who you'd trust with the nuclear arsenal? For the junkies who mainline this stuff, here are the numbers, with the "don't know" percentage in parentheses:

1) Rudolph Giuliani - 64.2. (9)

2) Sen. Barack Obama - 58.8 (41)

3) Sen. John McCain - 57.7 (12)

4) Condoleezza Rice - 56.1 (7)

5) Former President Bill Clinton - 55.8 (1)

6) Sen. Joseph Lieberman - 52.7 (16)

7) NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg - 51.1 (44)

8) John Edwards - 49.9 (20)

9) Sen. Hillary Clinton - 49 (1)

10) N.M. Gov. Bill Richardson - 47.7 (65)

11) Sen. Joseph Biden 47 (52)

12) Rep. Nancy Pelosi 46.9 (34)

13) Gov. Mitt Romney - 45.9 (64)

14) Former VP Al Gore - 44.9 (3)

15) President Bush - 43.8 (1)

16) Sen. Evan Bayh - 43.3 (75)

17) Newt Gingrich - 42 (15)

18) Sen. Bill Frist - 41.5 (53)

19) Sen. Harry Reid - 41.2 (61)

20) Sen. John Kerry - 39.6 (5)

Betsy Newmark is skeptical:

"How many people do you think have even heard of people like [Bill] Richardson, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, Michael Bloomberg, or even Bill Frist? I just don't think that these guys are nationally famous. I suspect that more than half of the respondents had no idea who those people were so we're getting responses from a minority of those answering the poll. I bet if they did one of those Jay Leno walks on the street asking random people to identify any of those people, people wouldn't have any idea -- perhaps New Yorkers might have heard of Michael Bloomberg, but that would be it."

In case you missed this, as I did, Slate reports on political Googlebombing:

"The November 12 New York Times noted that a familiar Internet prank had been elevated during the recent congressional midterm elections to a campaign tool. The Times called it 'loaded links,' but more typically the technique is called Googlebombing. The idea is to get lots of Web sites to use the same 'anchor text' (i.e., the text you actually see in hyperlinks) to link to a particular Web page.

"Because of the peculiarities of Google's search algorithms, this raises the Google ranking of that Web page much higher than would otherwise be the case. The campaign application is obvious: create a pattern of links that will offer up negative commentary about a particular candidate to Google users. This variety of Googlebombing appears to be the first campaign dirty trick (practitioners prefer the term 'netroots citizen activism') in many a year to be pioneered by Democrats."

Finally, Barbara Walters was that interested in O.J.?

" Newsweek has learned that ABC's Barbara Walters had explored so seriously the idea of doing a Simpson interview to promote the book that when she balked at proceeding, ABC's Entertainment division had to pay Murdoch's publishing arm a 'kill fee' of as much as $1 million."