In or around the time of former US President George W. Bush’s campaign for re-election in 2004, an opinion poll asked Americans whether they thought he knew about, or was involved in, the infamous terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.
The results of that poll were probably the first harbinger of the impact of hyper-partisanship in the internet age. Republicans were united in their view that the President had known nothing. Independent centrist voters agreed by a large margin. But Democrats? A clear majority of them told the pollster that Bush knew (and by implication had let it happen).
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