Originally posted by Gooshin "is more responsible"
What does Obama have to do with what Bush did?
the question should be: "how well do you think Obama is cleaning up Bush's mess?"
more responsible.. that's not even proper grammar.
"Responsible for" is a prepositional phrase. Many prepositional phrases have evolved through common useage and do not necessarily make logical sense. However, some sense can be made in this case.
Prepositions perform three formal functions in sentences. They act as an adjective modifying a noun, as an adverb modifying a verb, or as a nominal when used in conjunction with the verb form to be.
"Obama is [more] responsible for the problems..." appears to be in fact, a nominal. Back to that in a moment.
In semantic terms, the preposition functions to illustrate a logical, temporal, or spatial relationship between the object of the prepositional phrase and the other components of the sentence.
The object is "the problems...", and the nominal "responsible for" seeks to illustrate the logical relationship between those problems and Obama.
I take it the trouble you have with this is the "more" part. There is an implied piece here. The sentence might really read:
Obama is [more] responsible for the problems... [than is Bush.]
This would make the sentence very much like the following example:
Since modern grammar is more concerned with the way words function in a sentence than with part-of-speech designations in a dictionary, it's a little different from the conventional understanding of noun, but it's very close.
You could extract the sentence "Modern grammar is more concerned with the way words function in a sentence." without doing any violence whatsoever to the meaning encapsulated therein.
Now, unless you subscribe to the notion that there cannot be varying degrees of responsibility, and that responsibility itself is either absolute or null, then I am pretty certain that the use of "more" to modify the prepositional phrase "responsible for" is simply a way of modifying the prepositional phrase to assign the relative degree of logical relationship... ie: more or less.
But don't take my word for it...
Nonpredicative (or nominal) prepositional modifiers behave like adjectives while predicative prepositional modifiers behave like adverbs.
So our prepositional phrase here should equate to an adjective. That said, there are multiple ways to use the word "more."
I think the governing definition is of more as an adverb, which is:
"In or to a greater degree or extent: used with many adjectives and adverbs (regularly with those of three or more syllables) to form the comparative degree: more satisfying, more intensely."
In short, I cannot find any reason to say that the usage here is grammatically incorrect.
Rather, I would say that in some ways, the sentence is poorly constructed as it assumes certain things. On the other hand, this sentence is used in a manner that splits a single sentence into two in order to cater to the special needs of answering one of the other, as in a choice.
The single sentence would be:
Obama is [more] responsible for the problems... [than is Bush.]
Breaking it apart is a simple expedient that serves the format of the device, ie: a poll.
So what.
woof!