CNN boils Libby trial down to one sentence, includes "Cheney," and gets desired result

Okay, let's play along for the time being.

Nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose a presidential pardon for former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby after his conviction on perjury and other charges related to a CIA agent's exposure, according to a CNN poll out Monday.

Just 18 percent said they would support a pardon for Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, while 69 percent said they opposed the idea.

Interesting. That sounds like it may be pretty close to Cheney's approval rating... which has hovered around the 18% range before... which is really pretty irrelevant in the big picture... and is especially irrelevant to the Libby case. But I digress. Sort of.

Now you might think,

That's funny, I didn't think that many people were following the case, let alone understood it. Surely, the first question was,

1. Are you familiar with who 'Scooter' Libby is?

and for those who answer in the affirmative, the second question would be along the lines of,

2. Have you been following the case?

But no. Looking at the poll itself, here's the lone question CNN asked about Libby:

As you may know, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's former top aide, was recently found guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury in connection with the CIA leak investigation. Do you think George W. Bush should or should not give a presidential pardon to Libby?

Now I'm no statistician, but I'm pretty sure that if you didn't know anything else about me and CNN asked the following question -- "As you may know, Patrick Ishmael likes Dick Cheney. Would you like Patrick Ishmael?" -- the results would come out about the same. After all, if CNN can boil a whole situation down to one sentence, you really have all the information you need here. Everyone's just uninformed.

Further, in this question someone has been convicted of a crime. Knowing nothing else about the person or the case, would you have the President pardon them? I wouldn't. And that's the point.

Could someone please do the following poll?!

1. Do you know who "Scooter" Libby is?
2. Have you been following his court case?
3. Should President Bush pardon Libby?
   

I'd love to see the results, as I'm pretty sure they'd be radically different.

Update 3/13 @ 12:09pm: The NY Times is reporting Dick Cheney's favorability rating today. And the result? Exactly 18% of Americans approve of the job he's doing.

Amazing.