President George Bush got some (marginally) good news from the Gallup Poll today: it turns out that he will leave office more popular than Richard Nixon:
A new USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Jan. 9-11, finds 34% of Americans approving of the overall job George W. Bush is doing as president and 61% disapproving. Those ratings are a shade better than what Bush has received for most of the past year, and may represent the kind of lame-duck approval bounce Gallup has seen for other presidents.
So we’ve all heard of the poll bounce, but there is also a “lame-duck approval bounce.” MORE:
Bush had been averaging a 29% approval rating for the last quarter of his presidency up to now — identical to his average approval ratings for each of the previous two quarters. Individual Gallup approval readings on Bush exceeded that figure several times in the past year, including a 33% reading in September. However, the current 34% approval score is Bush’s highest since January 2008, and a sharp improvement from the 25% recorded right before the November elections.
And where does Bush’s big approval boost come from? If you thought about the last 8 years and remember our contention that George W. Bush has ruled as President of the Base, by the Base and for the Base it has come from…his base:
Bush mainly has members of his own party to thank for the fact that he is ending his presidency with an approval rating above 30%. Republicans’ approval of him rose from 67% in mid-December to 75% in the current poll — their highest rating of Bush in nearly a year. By contrast, approval of Bush remains extremely scarce among Democrats, and continues to fall under 30% among independents.
So in the end Bush will leave being a President who was unable to create a coalition of support that went beyond social conservatives, talk show hosts and their listeners and those who are already proud conservatives. There IS and HAS BEEN another way to do it, as history shows. Will Obama seek consensus rather than a 50+ 1 partisan Presidency? It looks like he’s trying to do just that — but the obstacles of pulling it off are huge in 21st century America where demonizing opponents and playing the polarizing game are more popular than a hot fudge sundae.
But the GOOD NEWS IS: in terms of polling, Bush can now sleep easy knowing he won’t go down as having left office as unpopular as or less popular than Richard Nixon:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.