Bill Mulligan writes…
During the long slide of Bush's popularity you occasionally stated the opinion that he was actually less popular than the polls suggested, due to Republicans just not wanting to pile on. Now that Obama has dropped to 45% in the Gallup polls — lower in others but let's just take Gallup for the sake of argument — what would you think are his actual numbers? Low 30s? Even less?
Beats me but I'll bet it's lower than Gallup says. I think politicians are always less popular than those polls indicate and my logic is as follows: If I'm a member of Party A, I'm for the stated agenda of Party A. I'm probably not a fan of too many of its leaders but I want the Party A philosophy to rule America. I may even think that some of the Party A candidates are incompetent boobs or crooks but I back them because to not back them would be to give a leg up to Party B and we can't have that. So when the pollsters ring me up and ask what I think of an elected official or candidate from Party A, I tell them he or she is great, wonderful, honest, trustworthy, etc. Or at least, I'm inclined to. Sometimes, one of them may piss me off enough that I'll say what I really feel, especially when there's no election imminent. It's a weapon I have to try and push my guy towards the right or left, whichever way I want him.
But for the most part, I don't think most of us like "our guys" as much as we tell pollsters. We're frustrated every time they say something stupid or it comes out that they did something of questionable ethics. We think, "Jeez! Now, I have to defend that to the friends of mine who support Party B, plus this may help Party B win." I wish we had a little more honesty among ourselves about this. If you can't admit you're embarrassed by some of the things done by the candidates you support, you either have blinders on or you're just not being honest…with others if not yourself.
So I think whenever the polls say that any president has a 45% disapproval rating, it's probably more like 55%. And we should also remember that some of that 55% will still vote for the guy. What would really interest me — and I've seen some of this but not nearly enough — is a breakdown of how many of those who "disapprove" of Obama's performance disapprove because they hate the agenda he's advancing and how many disapprove because they feel he's not advancing it firmly and quickly enough. Of those who are down on Health Care Reform, how many want to go back to what we had or let Mitch McConnell fix it? And how many disapprove because there's no Single Payer or public option? (I'd also be curious as to how many of those who disapprove of Obama's agenda even know what it is and how many just think it's what Rush Limbaugh says it is? There are people who disapprove of Obama because they think he's a Muslim Socialist just as there were folks who disapproved of Bush because they thought he arranged for the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center.)