By 1990 the deficit had grown to three times its size in 1980. The federal government shut down for three days and the Democratic majority in Congress eventually forced Bush to raise tax revenues. But events of the Gulf War pushed economic issues out of the news and Bush ended up with an overall approval rating of 60.9 percent for his term in office, second only to Kennedy.
After three Republican presidential terms and the economy again in recession, two candidates ran against President Bush in the 1992 election: Arkansas Democratic Governor Bill Clinton and Independent businessman Ross Perot. Bush's 89 percent approval
ratings following the Persian Gulf War made him look like a certain winner, but the economy trumped his approval ratings at the ballot box. Clinton prevailed with 43 percent of the popular vote to Bush’s 37.5 percent and Perot’s 18.9 percent. Ross Perot capitalized on the economic woe in his 1992 campaign and ran again in 1996. He siphoned an 8.4 percent popular vote as incumbent President Clinton defeated Kansas Republican Sen. Bob Dole 49.2 percent to 40.7 percent.
The Congressional Budget Office reported a budget surplus between the years 1998 and 2000, the longest economic expansion period in US history. Only the second president to be impeached by the House, the Senate failed to muster the constitutional two-thirds majority requirement to convict and remove an officeholder. Despite the impeachment and another government shutdown, Clinton left office with the highest end-of-office approval rating of any US president since World War II at 60.6 percent. His highest approval rating scored 73 percent and his lowest recorded 37 percent.
Economy tends to trump political events no matter how much of a splash those events create. Kennedy’s high rating occurred because he died in office before his first term ended. Reagan’s approval rating of 52.8 percent falls behind the 55.1 percent approval rating of LBJ and Bill Clinton, who tie for 3rd place. George H.W. Bush comes in second to JFK at 60.9 percent. Those are the numbers.
Here are some more. Take a look at the disapproval ratings for the eight presidents I've discussed. Keep them in mind the next time approval ratings are brought up as some kind of data being foisted off as something significant.
- John Kennedy: 56
- Lyndon Johnson: 35
- Richard Nixon: 24
- Gerald Ford: 37
- Jimmy Carter: 28
- Ronald Reagan: 38
- George H.W. Bush: 29
- Bill Clinton: 37
The public changes its mind with regularity and presidents are just not that popular. Why anyone would want such a job is another question.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Cannonshop
wow...good article.
I agree, the breathless 'reporting' of approval polls is basically of no use, anyone that is going to be effective in any leadership position, is going to be disliked by SOMEONE.
Which is why I felt no hint of shame at mocking the President when he was whining about people being mean to him-it comes as part of the job, with the Resolute Desk and that nifty round-ish office-Presidents are there to be disliked.
2 - handyguy
Very interesting article, Tommy. We do tend to get too caught up in individual weekly poll numbers, but the trend over several months does tell a story.
I don't know what Cannon is referring to...the president made some defensive remarks about Fox News and Rush Limbaugh early on, but in general, "whiny" is not a word that would apply. And the outrageous hyperbole of negative rhetoric he has been subjected to is nearly unprecedented, including ludicrous speculation about his birthplace and religion.
3 - William Waite
As always Tommy, I enjoy how you bring a perspective based in history to most of the topics you write about.
It's still a very, very long time until November of 2012 and it remains to be seen if Hillary will yet be called upon to carry the progressive standard but until then, let's all have another big glass of that kool-aid...
4 - Clavos
And the outrageous hyperbole of negative rhetoric he has been subjected to is nearly unprecedented, including ludicrous speculation about his birthplace and religion.
Poor Obie.
Those mean ol' voters just be pickin' on him soooo much...
5 - Arch Conservative
"And the outrageous hyperbole of negative rhetoric he has been subjected to is nearly unprecedented"
I was going to ask if you were in a coma from 2000 until 2008 but you did say "nearly unprecedented" and not "unprecedented."
6 - Cannonshop
".... And the outrageous hyperbole of negative rhetoric he has been subjected to is nearly unprecedented, including ludicrous speculation about his birthplace and religion."
No moreso than the outrageous hyperbole from the left for the period from 2000 to 2008, (actually longer, since everything that failed after is, according to the Left, Bush's fault.)
Then again, I suppose by Democrat lights, calling someone "Hitler" over and over and over again (Bushitler, get it?) is neither outrageous nor hyperbole, the man is, after all, a Republican, and not a pet Repub like McCain..oh, wait, that's right, it's okay to hate McCain now, because he ran against "The One".
Civility in American politics is a polite fiction, mostly engaged in by those whom find they do not enjoy their side being the recipient of the sort of slanders they themselves engaged in with vigour and joy mere months before.
Oh, and, ah, Handy? The questions about Birthplace and Religion came from OTHER DEMOCRATS during the Primaries. Expecting your opponents and opposition NOT to run with such juicy tidbits of your OWN campaign tactics seems a little naive.
7 - handyguy
"Juicy tidbits" that were totally imaginary, fictional speculation. Are you actually defending this nonsense? The Clinton campaign may have floated the rumor, and shame on them. But the hysteria came entirely from the right, and you know it.
For the record, neither I nor anyone I know would compare George Bush to Hitler. As if that justifies the birthers anyhow.
You, as my mother would say, would argue with a fencepost...if you perceived it to be a Democrat.
8 - zingzing
we all seem to have very short memories. cannonshop can't even make it much more than a day without forgetting.
9 - Dr Dreadful
The Clinton campaign may have floated the rumor, and shame on them. But the hysteria came entirely from the right, and you know it.
Not entirely. Philip Berg, one of the most prominent birthers and a persistent courtroom pest, was a frustrated Hilary supporter.
10 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
I realize it really ticks you off when we keep rubbing BC conservatives' noses in what Dubya did...
...because even now we're paying over a hundred billion taxpayer dollars per year in interest ALONE directly due to what Dubya did...not to mention a couple of wars that are still going on, if you'll remember.
Now, since you want SO bad for us to lay blame on Obama, I'll ask you exactly what it is that you want us to blame him for? The stimulus that you hate him so much for? ONE-THIRD of it was tax cuts...and as a result, you and I both have a lower tax burden than taxpayers have had since the Truman administration!
The lowest tax burden we've had (taxes vs. income) for fifty years and you think his fiscal policies aren't Republican enough for you????
Do you want to blame him for the skyrocketing deficit? If you'll look, our spending didn't increase by leaps and bounds, but our REVENUE took a nose dive and THAT, sir, is what drove our deficit so much higher.
"Obamacare"? Thanks to him, my oldest son will have access to health care that he didn't have before...and thanks to the individual mandate (which was pushed by the REPUBLICANS in the 1990's and by Romney as part of his health care reform in Massachusetts), "Obamacare" is actually projected to CUT the deficit!
So I'm having a REAL hard time finding something to blame Obama for that comes even close to what Dubya did: two wars, Medicare Part D, and the tax cuts for the wealthy.
Show me something that Obama did that even approached ANY of these, and then we'll talk. But until then, I'll keep placing the blame where it squarely belongs - on the Republicans and on Bush.
11 - Tommy Mack
The thing Obama isn't doing is unleashing the DOJ on the Tea Party members of congress as the racketeers they became when they succeeded in lowering the US credit rating to make money off of a stock manipulation scheme.
But it is hard to get cooperation from people when you have them investigated, indict a few under the RICO Act and yank them into court.
Tommy
12 - Clavos
our spending didn't increase by leaps and bounds, but our REVENUE took a nose dive and THAT, sir, is what drove our deficit so much higher.
No, that was only half of it. The other, and more important half, was the total failure by Obama and his czars to react and rein in spending sharply in response, as an offsetting countermeasure to the drop in revenue.
13 - Clavos
"Obamacare"[sic] is actually projected to CUT the deficit!
Not quite. According to Forbes,
Well, the Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently put out its annual projections of national health care spending. And, contrary to the President, the actuaries find that Obamacare will dramatically increase the near-term growth rate of health care costs. In 2014, the actuaries find that growth in the net cost of health insurance will increase by nearly 14 percent, compared to 3.5% if PPACA had never passed. The growth rate of private insurance costs will rise to 9.4 percent, from 5.0 percent under prior law: an 88% increase.
Forbes also noted:
As P.J. O’Rourke memorably put it in 1993, “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”
14 - Tommy Mack
O'Rourke also noted, "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."
Well, you said.
Tommy
15 - Clavos
That's the joy of O'Rourke, Tommy: an aphorism for every situation.
16 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos 12/13 -
Try crunching the numbers. See how much Obama increased spending in the 2010 budget over the previous year (since 2010 was the first one he submitted).
You are not a simplistic person, but your crack about reining in spending exemplifies the simplistic thinking of conservatives - "oh, it's simple, just cut the spending and voila! the budget is balanced!"
No, Clavos, it doesn't work that way. When tens of thousands of teachers lose their jobs, its our country's future that suffers much more than the taxpayer money we 'saved'. Same thing for the cops that lost their jobs, and the trash collectors, the bus drivers, all the hundreds of thousands of government workers (including your favorite boogeymen from the IRS and the USPS) whose jobs DO help the infrastructure of this nation function.
And instead of continuing to help the nation function, those people are now in the unemployment line, providing a fiscal burden where once they provided a very real benefit that significantly outweighed the taxes that paid for their jobs.
17 - Glenn Contrarian
And Clavos - when it comes to the cost of free health care for everyone, wait till health care is free for no one! Let's you and me find a country where NO taxpayer dollars go to help pay for health care...and then you can see how expensive it is when there's NO "socialized" health care.
But that's the disconnect here - the conservative sees the dollars flying out of his pocket and is outraged because those were HIS dollars and there was so much more he could have done with them, like investing more in his business...
...but he never thinks that just as a rising tide lifts all boats, a population that is healthier overall is a HUGE benefit to business - because those people are healthy enough (and alive!) to earn money to spend at that conservative's business.
Clavos, "many hands make light work". If we all give some (and we're giving less now than we have since Truman was president, remember), we ALL share in the benefits. Sure, most conservatives will say that smacks of communism...but every nation must have a government, and a government must have taxes in order to operate. If you refuse to pay what the government needs in order to operate well, then you're going to get a broken government...and if you keep taking the funds away, the government will only get MORE broken.
The education system is the best example - if the education system sucks, you DON'T fix it by slicing-and-dicing its budget! That will NOT fix it - that's like telling a surgeon to save the patient but the only surgical tool he's allowed to have is a hammer!
18 - Dr Dreadful
just as a rising tide lifts all boats
Except the ones with holes in them.
[runs away giggling maniacally]
19 - Clavos
- if the education system sucks, you DON'T fix it by slicing-and-dicing its budget!
If, as Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch point out in their trenchant book, The Declaration of Independents, your education system's "budget" has more than doubled since the 1970-71 school year (from about $4500 per pupil to over $10,000) and tripled since 1961-62, with no improvement in results (as measured by testing the students) you had better start looking to tracking the money and cutting the obvious fat.
Gillespie and Welch point out the two principal problems with the public K-12 education system:
1) It's mandatory.
2) Unlike in higher education, there is virtually no consumer choice between competing alternatives.
20 - Jet Gardner
Our education system is failing because teachers are being forced to educate science students using the bible, and are being told that real scientific fact is only "theory" because it contradicts "god"
Is it any wonder the U.S. is falling behind?
Biology teaches how organisms evolve-which is contrary to what right-wing born-agains want taught.
History teachers are telling students that this country was founded as a god-fearing theocracy instead of by people fleeing from religious oppression in England. Pat Robertson insists that George Washington was sent as a "2nd Jesus" to save the new world from the heratics.
Astronomy is being mis-taught because if a student is taught that a star is a million light-years old (the distance light travels in a million years) it can't possibly exist- the scientists are wrong because god didn't create the universe and Earth until 5,000-10,000 years ago-so how can light travel that long when it didn't exist until god created it in Genesis and pronounced it good?
It's no longer being taught who really made that midnight ride to warn the colonists that "The British are Coming". Why? Because Born-again bigots don't want someone with a jewish-sounding name connected with it. Paul Revere only rode 19 miles. The real rider was Israel Bissel who crossed four states to give the warning.
When is america going to grow up and stop having school's teach from facts, instead of from an outdated 2000 year old text book based on fairy tales and mis-translated bullshit??????????????????
21 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
The problem is, the conservatives are making the cuts willy-nilly. They are NOT taking care to FIRST identify the problems and then saying, "this is where we need to make cuts". Instead, they're saying, "We're cutting X billion from the education budget - YOU figure out where the problems are."
The problem with that approach is that the conservatives are ASSUMING that spending more on education is automatically a bad thing. For instance:
- in 1961 were schools addressing sex education? No. But now they are - and the results are that the states that do not do so have higher rates of teenage pregnancy.
- in 1961, were schools teaching about computers?
- in 1961, were schools having to deal with a pace of scientific advance that essentially makes science books obsolete after two or three years?
- in 1961, did schools have ANY clue about ADD/ADHD, or were they having to deal with the greatly-increased rate of autism spectrum? If you'll recall, it was quite common then for severely-disabled kids to be kept at home out of the public view - but now they go to school where public schools (but VERY few private schools) provide nurses and caregivers for them.
- in 1961, when schools provided sports equipment, they provided basic stuff at best - but have you seen what they are expected to provide now even to be allowed to compete with football? Sports is FAR more expensive now than it was before...and NO, Clavos, the answer isn't "just get rid of the sports".
- in 1961, was multiculturalism a concern of schools?
In 1961, Clavos, American schools were behind what many third-world countries teach NOW. If we went back to the budgets we had then, well, you get what you pay for.
22 - Glenn Contrarian
And Clavos -
We need to spend MORE - yes, MORE - on our schools because we need to get rid of the summer vacation...and in order to keep our students in school year-round (except for the breaks here and there), you've got to fork over the money needed to do so...
...because many other nations are already going to year-round education, while our students spend the first four to six weeks in September relearning what they forgot over the summer!
And to address your other statement - if YOU want to spend your personal money to send a kid to a different school, that should be your choice. But don't take MY taxpayer dollars to pay for some kid to go to a religious school. That's simply not right...but that's what your fellow conservatives want to do.
And what will happen if you get rid of the national standards imposed by the DOE that you despise? Do you really think that schools would raise their standards? They're encouraged to do so RIGHT NOW. What would happen, Clavos, is precisely what happens in any industry when the requirements to meet standards are taken away: the standards are either lowered or remain stagnant as the years go by.
I know you want the best for kids, Clavos - but your approach would leave our education in even worse straits than it's in right now. If we want to make our education system better, we must:
(1) give the school boards more authority to get rid of underperforming teachers
(2) get rid of summer vacation
(3) STOP tying school funding to property taxes, for such on ensures that rich areas get rich schools, and poor areas stay poor
(4) Significantly raise the salaries for teachers to the same level as doctors or lawyers (as it is in the countries with the best education systems)...and at the same time hold them to much higher standards and continue to increase those standards.
You don't save a patient by bleeding him - you save him by fixing the problem with little regard for how much it costs to save him.
You get what you pay for, Clavos - and this idiocy of "slash the education budgets" i.e. "save the patient by bleeding him" is NOT going to save our schools.
23 - Clavos
The problem with that approach is that the conservatives are ASSUMING that spending more on education is automatically a bad thing.
No. Spending more on education without a commensurate improvement in results is what conservatives are objecting to -- and rightfully so.
Budgets have doubled and tripled in the last 40-50 years and the quality has plunged.
We have listened to and acted upon the recommendations of the teachers (more money -- always more money) and their unions long enough; it's time to start running education in a fiscally sound manner and give control of the system back to the consumers -- the local districts and the parents.
24 - Jet Gardner
Clavos the quality hasn't plunged because of funding, it's plunged because of what today's teachers are being forced to teach, vs reality.
Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
25 - Glenn Contrarian
Clavos -
Willya please apply the logic you insist upon to your own claims? You addressed not one of my points - not one! Instead, you continued on the same tired old talking point.
And that's been the pattern for conservative complaints for years - not only about education but about government agencies in general: such-and-such is broken so let's just slash its budget or defund it altogether.
That is simplistic thinking, and you are doing yourself a disservice by not thinking things through, by not paying attention to the details, to the permutations, to exactly what needs fixed.
Instead, it's "throw the baby out with the bathwater" by slashing spending or outright defunding.
And where does this attitude come from? If the majority of PhD's in a particular field say something, who's more likely to believe them, and who's more likely to call them "elitists"? You know what I'm talking about, and it's seen when it comes to climate change, to economics, to education.