Obama Unaccountable at Double the Rate of Previous Presidents



Kyle Becker
On June 21, 2013
https://twitter.com/kylenbecker

The Obama administration is historic in one regard: the president is not associated with his policies at twice the rate of previous presidents. His job approval, likability, direction of the country and other metrics simply don’t add up.

Conservatives, independents, and journalists on the left and right who actually do their jobs have noticed this unusual trending of various polling metrics. Gallup polled it and laid it out:
Obama‘s approval rating is higher than Americans’ satisfaction with the direction the country is headed, a Gallup survey released Wednesday indicated.

The 24 percentage point gap is typical for Obama’s presidency but represents a much greater presidential job-approval nod than most presidents since Ronald Reagan enjoyed, Gallup said of its review of polling data.

The average gap between approval and satisfaction for George W. Bush during his eight years in the White House was 12 percentage points, the Princeton, N.J., polling agency said. The gap was 10 percentage points for presidents Bill Clinton and Reagan.

Four big polls tell this story. First, President Obama’s likability, which comes from a May 20thCNN/ORC poll. When 923 adults were surveyed by phone, 79% thought the president was likable, while only 20% disagreed.

This may baffle a lot of conservatives, especially given that this was polled after the IRS scandal, but the president is seen as a nice guy by overwhelming margins. One might pose that George W. Bush is as affable a guy as Barack Obama, but the media coverage is completely reverse — in a hostile direction towards the former and a sycophantic direction towards the latter.

Again, the public does not associate the president with his administration’s behavior and policies. The president’s likability is one major reason why. When something negative happens in politics, people have an image of the president that he would never have anything to do with that.

Now, for the direction of the country. This can be shown by the current average of polls for right direction/wrong track:

The “wrong track” rate drops dramatically after the election of President Obama, and then immediately shoots up for two years once political reality sets in. Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country escalates drastically while the president is virtually unopposed, but the gap between wrong track/right direction closes after the tea party freshmen elected in 2010 are sworn in. The gap has widened in the wrong direction after the President’s re-election.

How can the tea party that was vilified and blamed by the media for all manner of policy failures help make people more satisfied with the direction of the country? The 2010 Congress has virtually no accomplishments to speak of, thanks to the Democrats in control of the Senate and the President, so what gives?

Because the tea party provides the Democrats and the media with a scapegoat, that’s why. The rapid decline of the “tea party” as a brand is well-documented. The House GOP has adisapproval rate of 75%, much worse than Obama’s could ever be. The tea party and conservatives have been relentlessly character-assassinated, and it has worked so far.

Maybe the president should thank the tea party for improvement on this metric? Because the economy is mostly unchanged from two years ago for the majority of Americans, and in public opinion polling, that’s the issue that matters the most.

http://www.ijreview.com/2013/06/6076...us-presidents/