Presidential Approval Graph

[Nitrox]

Interesting comparisons.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/presidential-approval-tracker.htm

 

 

[bstach]

 

In politics and in business, you don't have to be good. You just have to suck less than the next closest competitor.

[tvashtarkatena]

I wonder what God's approval rating would look like for each one of us?

[Nitrox]

Politics is a popularity contest. It doesn't matter how much the president sucks so long as people like him and the popularity can be translated into votes.

 

 

 

[prole]

Politics is a popularity contest. It doesn't matter how much the president sucks so long as people like him and the popularity can be translated into votes.

 

 

Bedtime for Democracy

 

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rWBUdI_dZc&feature=PlayList&p=48B287516EC79E77&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=88

[prole]

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC3VOFCeFts&feature=related

[rob]

For that matter, what would god's approval ratings be like, over that same time period?

[summitchaserCJB]

Interesting.

[sobo]

For that matter, what would god's approval ratings be like, over that same time period?

According to this metric, not very good...

[Off_White]

That's actually really interesting data, particularly comparing pre and post Watergate presidential approval ratings at this point in office.

 

Bush was still relatively high on his downward slope from his 911 gratuitous spike, but aside from that you have to go back to Nixon to find a president with higher approval ratings at this point in their term.

[billcoe]

 

Don't worry, be happy.

 

[Mal_Con]

A considerable part of the disapproval portion is voters who believe Obama has not been liberal enough. That will not translate into votes for a GOP rival, behold the wonders of triangulation.

[j_b]

Of course, but that's not part of corporate media narrative because it contradicts the spin of DLC corporatists about the necessity to move to the "center" (i.e. further to the right if it were possible). Regressives love it too because it gives the impression that more than the usual dead-enders (20-25% of the voting age pop.) actually believe anything they are saying.

[Nitrox]

That's actually really interesting data, particularly comparing pre and post Watergate presidential approval ratings at this point in office.

 

Bush was still relatively high on his downward slope from his 911 gratuitous spike, but aside from that you have to go back to Nixon to find a president with higher approval ratings at this point in their term.

 

Overlay Obama and Carter with the "comparison" tab. They trend nearly identically.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Throw Reagan in the mix and the same holds true. Kind of a meaningless comparison, really, given the vastly different historical drivers involved, and certainly not a predictor in any sense. It's tempting to follow popular blogic and attempt to compare Carter with Obama, but the two couldn't be more different by several key political measures. Carter's relationship with congress was famously dysfunctional. Obama just pushed two enormous, controversial measures through congress. It's true that both are presiding over some of our toughest economic and foreign policy challenges, but today's is a very different landscape, by every measure, than in Carter's time.

 

The biggest takeaway from the graphs is that Obama's in the Middle of the Road group regarding popularity, at least so far...unlike the extremes of his predecessor, and predecessor's father, for that matter. Makes sense, given Obama's calm, relatively unthreatening demeanor (although Bush senior was kind of the same way personalitywise).

 

It'll be interesting to see if the GOP can come up with a man with as large a presence as Reagan next election. Um...I kinda doubt it, though, unless they gin one up from spare parts or something.

Edited June 19, 2010 by tvashtarkatena

[Off_White]

I think it looks like before Watergate, Americans of both parties were more willing to give the current President the benefit of the doubt, and since they've figured out that politicians are not all that trustworthy, the degree of criticism and the rapidity of disapproval is much greater. That's Nixon's real legacy, not the China contact or other happy crap they've trotted out to polish his tombstone.

 

Obama's current stats are not very different from any other modern President's at this point in office. Reagan was lower, Clinton had dropped much lower earlier and had rallied UP to Obama's current percentage. People are much less prepared to be satisfied in general with any politician, and I think its a reasonable hypothesis that they're especially less prepared to think well of any President from an opposing party, which was clearly not the case 40 years ago.

 

 

[tvashtarkatena]

I don't know. If you look at Truman (and probably his predecessors, if that data had been available), it looks like things haven't really changed all that much.

[prole]

Overlay Obama and Carter with the "comparison" tab. They trend nearly identically.

 

That's some DaVinci Code shit there. Call Nicholas Cage!

[Nitrox]

Overlay Obama and Carter with the "comparison" tab. They trend nearly identically.

 

That's some DaVinci Code shit there. Call Nicholas Cage!

 

Nick Cage was in DaVinci Code? I hope he got an Oscar cause he did a damn good job acting like Tom Hanks.

 

 

[prole]

Well, he's no Scott Baio! HAHAHAHAHA!!!

[Nitrox]

It's tempting to follow popular blogic and attempt to compare Carter with Obama, but the two couldn't be more different by several key political measures.

 

No shit? Well geez, who could have known...

 

 

June 17, 2010

Malaise is Haunting the Democratic Party

By E.J. Dionne

WASHINGTON -- A weird malaise is haunting the Democratic Party.

 

That's a risky word to use, I know. It's freighted with bad history and carries unfortunate implications. So let's be clear: President Obama is not Jimmy Carter, not even close. And Obama's speech on Tuesday was nothing like Carter's 1979 "malaise speech" in which Carter never actually used that word. Obama gave a good and sensible speech that was not a home run.

 

 

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E.J. Dionne RealClearPolitics

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What's odd is that Obama was seen as needing a home run. This is where the Democratic malaise comes in.

 

Democrats should feel a lot better than they do. They enacted a health care bill that had been their dream for more than 60 years. They pulled the country out of a terrifying economic spiral. They are on the verge of passing the biggest reform of Wall Street since the New Deal. The public has identified enemies that are typically seen as Republican allies: oil companies and big bankers. And given the Republicans' past policies, the Gulf oil spill is at least as much their problem as Obama's.

 

On top of this, the GOP seems to be doing all it can to make itself unelectable, veering far to the right and embracing a tea party movement that, at its extremes, preaches the need for revolution. That sounds more like the old New Left than a reinvigorated conservatism. Oh yes, and can you think of one thing Republicans stand for right now other than cutting spending? Never mind that they are conspicuously vague about what they'd cut.

 

Yet it is Democrats who are petrified, uncertain and hesitant -- and this was true before the oil spill made matters worse. Obama's bold rhetoric about "the need to end America's century-long addiction to fossil fuels" was not matched by specifics because he knows that nearly a dozen Senate Democrats are skittish about acting. Why does it so often seem that Republicans are full of passionate intensity while Democrats lack all conviction?

 

The month's most important document may prove to be a poll done for National Public Radio by the Democratic firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republicans at Public Opinion Strategies. In the 70 most competitive House districts, 60 of them held by Democrats, the pollsters concluded that the Democrats "face a daunting environment in 2010."

 

"The results are a wake-up call for Democrats whose losses in the House could well exceed 30 seats," they declared. Two findings convey the whole: "Sixty-two percent of Republicans in Democratic districts describe themselves as very enthusiastic about the upcoming election" compared with only 37 percent of Democrats. And: "By 57 to 37 percent, voters in these 60 Democratic seats believe that President Obama's economic policies have produced record deficits while failing to slow job losses."

 

Paranoia is striking deep among Democrats, and this poll will only aggravate this disorder. In those competitive districts, Democratic incumbents will be tempted to hunker down, distance themselves from the president, urge their leaders to be cautious, and run for the hills to seek refuge from a looming Republican wave.

 

But the numbers in the NPR survey are so bad that Democrats might pause before becoming lemmings. There is something preposterous about how the administration and congressional Democrats have lost every major public argument that they should be winning.

 

They lost it on a stimulus bill that clearly lifted the economy, as Alan Blinder, the former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, argued persuasively in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. They are losing it on the health care bill, a big improvement on the current system enacted through a process that made it look like a tar ball on an Alabama beach. They are losing it on the deficit even as it was Republicans who cut taxes twice while the Bush administration was starting two wars.

 

Obama is often criticized for being too professorial. The irony is that Republicans who have little to say about how to solve the nation's major problems are dominating the country's underlying philosophical narrative.

 

From Plaquemines Parish to Wall Street, we are seeing what happens when government takes too hands-off an approach to private economic actors. Yet the GOP is managing to sell the idea that the big issue in this election should be -- government spending.

 

Professor Obama and his allies ought to be ashamed of this. The cure for malaise, defined as "a sensation of exhaustion or inadequate energy to accomplish usual activities," is to have a self-confident sense of purpose, and to act boldly in its pursuit.

 

Copyright 2010, Washington Post Writers Group

 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/06/17/a_different_kind_of_malaise_105989.html

 

 

[prole]

Tom Hanks is a national treasure. He's the GOP's only hope in '12.