POTUS Approval up til now

Gallup started keeping track of the president's overall job approval in the 1940s, starting with Harry Truman. More times than not, this approval rating has meant everything to the president and he will often work to do things to move his approval up, in the hopes of being reelected.

A lot has been made about President Obama's high approval numbers compared to President Bush's low numbers when he left office.

I don't know when it was released, but USA Today has released a handy dandy flash graph thing with which you can view each president's, since tracking began, approval rating and compare them and see where each president was/is at at the same point in time.

The thing that I found interesting is that, for all the hoopla around Obama's "high" numbers, he is only doing better than Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton at this day in his presidency. That means that even George W. Bush was doing better at this stage in the game, when you would think that he would've been doing worse considering all the disgruntled people still saulking over the Supreme Court "handing" Bush the victory over Al Gore.

Granted, Bush is only doing better (as far as approval goes) at this point by about one percentage point or two. But, Obama has more people that disapprove of his presidency according to these numbers than Bush did. Obama has around 41% disapproval compared to Bush's 33%. The "no opinion" is 4% to 11% for Obama and Bush respectively.

If anything, I think that these numbers show how the main stream media are trying to manipulate our opinion of Obama to make us think that he is doing better than any president before him.

How do we fire the Press?

I stopped watching, but they still report McNews!

Can we boycott their advertisers? Send letters to the people controlling the money? I miss Cronkite already!

I noticed in those charts that there's always a huge spike with war and conflict.

All Obama needs is a few thousand dead Americans or to invade Pakistan/Iran/North Korea and he could be the most approved of President ever while America plummets into some devolving depression.

Folks must really love war.

reply to post by getreadyalready

How do we fire the Press?

I think the best thing to do is to spread the word and get more and more people to stop watching the main stream media. When people stop watching, the advertisers will pull out, and they'll fold, just like the print media is slowing doing.

Or, I suppose, a truly no biased source, that just reports whats going on, could be launched that gives the main stream a run for its money. Actually, that probably wouldn't work because people in this day in age are too into the right/left, Republican/Democrat thing. So, they just want to hear the news with their preferred spin on it as opposed to what's going on.

A strong third party could do the trick too.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

I noticed in those charts that there's always a huge spike with war and conflict.

That's true. I didn't notice that before. I don't see the spike for the Vietnam War though.

Folks must really love war.

I think for the people, it becomes more a patriotic thing. As for the politicians, they just do it for the cheap spike in popularity. It's kinda like the stupid things that some kids do in grade school for their fifteen minutes of fame.

As long as the majority in the MSM are defending or selling his policies, his numbers will stay above water. If they were giving Obama the treatment they gave bush, his numbers would be plummeting much faster.