In a July 1 column in the New York Post, Dick Morris -- the onetime Clinton adviser turned critic, author, and FOX News Channel political analyst -- exaggerated voter confidence in President George W. Bush's ability to protect the United States from terror attacks.

Voters overwhelmingly believe that [President] Bush would be the better president to wage the War on Terror. In the Fox News survey, voters said that Bush would be better than Kerry at “protecting the U.S. from terror attacks” by 49 percent to 28 percent.

While Morris saw fit to assert that voters “overwhelmingly” prefer President Bush based on a single FOX News poll, other polls show that the electorate is more divided. A June 22 Washington Post article, “Bush Loses Advantage in War on Terrorism,” reported that in a Washington Post-ABC News poll, Senator John Kerry and President Bush scored a statistical tie (48 percent to 47 percent, respectively) on a question regarding the “man they trusted to deal with the terrorist threat.”

A June 25 Rasmussen poll found voters preferring President Bush over Senator Kerry on matters of national defense and the war on terror by 49 percent to 42 percent, a far different result from the poll that Morris chose to cite.