Having Faith in Our Leadership

A headline caught my eye on the CNN ticker this morning: “Poll: More disapprove of Bush than any other president”. While this doesn’t surprise me, I did find the details interesting:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.

“No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president’s disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark,” said Keating Holland, CNN’s polling director.

“Bush’s approval rating, which stands at 28 percent in our new poll, remains better than the all-time lows set by Harry Truman and Richard Nixon [22 percent and 24 percent, respectively], but even those two presidents never got a disapproval rating in the 70s,” Holland said. “The previous all-time record in CNN or Gallup polling was set by Truman, 67 percent disapproval in January 1952.”

While Gallup polling goes back to the 1930s, it wasn’t until the Truman years that they began surveying monthly approval ratings.

CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider adds, “He is more unpopular than Richard Nixon was just before he resigned from the presidency in August 1974.”

President Nixon’s disapproval rating in August 1974 stood at 66 percent.

Absolutely amazing.