House of Eratosthenes

Obama’s approval ratings have generally been near the 50% mark since mid-November, although all of his weekly approval averages since late February have been below 50%.

Obama’s latest quarterly score of 48.8% is below average by historical standards, ranking in the 35th percentile of all presidential quarters for which Gallup has data, dating to 1945. The average historical quarterly approval average is 54%.

Additionally, Obama’s latest quarterly average does not compare favorably to other elected presidents’ averages at similar points in their presidencies. Obama joins Ronald Reagan (46.3%) and Jimmy Carter (48.0%) as the only elected presidents after World War II whose fifth quarter approval averages were below the 50% mark.

John McCain is owed an apology. At one point he made a statement that if Obama wins, it’ll be Jimmy Carter’s second term and he was roundly criticized and ridiculed for this. Well…if I say something bad about Obama I have a lot of people accusing me of being a racist, but other than that what’s the difference?

Seriously…there aren’t any bell-bottom jeans and we have the Internet. There is Netflix and Starbucks. That’s my list of differences between now and 1978; all the other differentials deal with magnitude, and are thus meaningless. As far as what’s going on in the government, the philosophy of “Our Approach To Any Problem Is To Make Sure No One Can Profit By Presenting a Solution,” don’t build that dam because you’ll endanger the snail darter, the encroaching into private business, the pressure to come up with shrunken-down car models nobody will want to buy, it feels eerily like 32 years ago.

I’m reminded, also, of a more recent past. Obama reminds this Californian of Governor Gray Davis. You have heard this story, have you not? We recalled him and that’s when we got The Terminator as our Governator. Our state’s recall process is a little bit over-simplified and screwy. We vote for/against the recall, on the same ballot on which we cast a vote for the ostensible replacement.

Davis’ re-election was routine. A few promises here to keep it legal to be gay; a few promises over there to “preserve womens’ right to choose,” and cottonhead was back in. (A cursory examination of the powers invested in the Governor, with regard to those two issues, reveals such pledges to be legally laughable.) But things still sucked, so the necessary signatures for a recall petition were collected in no time at all. The democrats couldn’t believe their eyes. They argued the point the way they argue everything else, by venting their theatrical outrage. The phrase “duly elected” was repeated ad nauseum. In the end it had no effect because we knew what we didn’t like.

It’s an interesting thought exercise: What if the recall provision from California’s state constitution, applied to our President?

What is it they hope to get out of such a ruse? I think it hasn’t been thought out..

Oh, I think it’s been thought out – on the level of two ten-year-olds saying “Hey, you know what let’s do? Call somebody whose number we got outta the phone book and tell ’em they’ve won the lottery and we’re gonna fly ’em to Sacramento to pick up their check. And then when they get all excited, say NOT!! That’ll kill ’em.”

Huh-huh-huh.
- rob | 04/22/2010 @ 10:23
Well, you’re right about that one.

What hasn’t been thought out is the cost to be paid for such tomfoolery. You see signs all over the place that this tired ol’ trope about liberals being brilliant at forming coherent thoughts, properly thinking things out, while conservatives are just a bunch of knuckledraggers — this is an important thing to them to keep in circulation. They spend a lot of energy on it. What hasn’t been thought-out, is the enormous potential this other thing has to set that effort back.

Oh, so now you’re oh so funny and witty and clever and fun-to-watch because you can’t pay attention to a single argument from beginning to end, Mister Liberal? Oh, alright. So this other thing you were saying about your monopoly on durable, practical cognitive thought…I guess we ignore everything you said there, then. One or the other, can’t have both.
- mkfreeberg | 04/22/2010 @ 10:39

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Obama Approval Slips Yet AgainWednesday, April 21st, 2010

Obama Approval Slips Yet Again
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010