Legitimacy and Presidential Power / Presidential Action

In chapter one, we saw a discussion of the tradeoffs of liberty and order, or security.

That tradeoff is illustrated in poll results presented in Friday, 1/27 New York Times.
New Poll Finds Mixed Support for Wiretaps

Americans are willing to tolerate eavesdropping without warrants to fight terrorism, but are concerned that the aggressive antiterrorism programs championed by the Bush administration are encroaching on civil liberties, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

In a sign that public opinion about the trade-offs between national security and individual rights is nuanced and remains highly unresolved, responses to questions about the administration's eavesdropping program varied significantly depending on how the questions were worded, underlining the importance of the effort by the White House this week to define the issue on its terms.

We will do more with polling and wording of polls in chapter 6. One concept that applies is Framing. The following is from Wikipedia:

Framing (communication theory)
...

framing is a process of selective control over media content or public communication. Framing defines how a certain piece of media content or rhetoric is packaged so as to allow certain desirable interpretations and rule out others.

The New York Times's story is clear that there is a political ("social conflict") struggle over how to get Americans to think about this: terrorist survellance, or domestic spying?:

The results suggest that Americans' view of the program depends in large part on whether they perceive it as a bulwark in the fight against terrorism, as Mr. Bush has sought to cast it, or as an unnecessary and unwarranted infringement on civil liberties, as critics have said.