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Matt Bai, in today's New York Times Magazine, writing about Obama and Afghanistan:

Judging from a recent poll by ABC News and The Washington Post, war-weary American voters are divided almost evenly on a course of action. The only thing they agree on is that they want the president to act soon.

That's an interesting act of "judging" on Bai's part, given the fact that the most recent ABC/Post poll didn't have a single question on the timing of Obama's Afghanistan troop-deployment decision. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll did, and it showed that a clear majority of respondents -- 58% -- approved of waiting until after the Afghan runoff before announcing the decision. When the poll was conducted, that was Obama critics' definition of "dithering" -- but the public was on Obama's side.

I don't want to give Bai too much grief for this -- he actually approves of Obama's approach -- but I can't help wondering if he thinks the public said something like this in the ABC/Post poll because so much of the noise in the Beltway implies public disgust with Obama's deliberateness that doesn't actually exist.