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July 21, 2009

Comments

What you say all makes sense, but it's interesting to compare this post with an older post analyzing the Bush approval rating. In 2005 you approached the declining approval rating as a consequence of the Administration's screw-ups and mistakes (your choice of words), and you heaped scorn on conservatives:

Meanwhile, conservatives are desperately trying to point fingers elsewhere. . . . Constantly finding excuses for the administration's policy failures is an ugly habit of mind.
You even pointed out that "blaming the media for everything is a lazy excuse."

Here we are in 2009 and your analysis is quite different. Using highly loaded terms, you tell us that "the GOP and its allies in the press have begun to aggressively attack [Obama's] approach to the [health care] issue." (emphasis added)

I looked in your 2005 post for any statement about Democrats and their allies in the press aggressively attacking Bush; nope, not there.

"[A]llies in the press" above means conservative pundits -- apologies for being unclear. As such, there's no contradiction with the 2005 post.

I didn't mean to suggest a contradiction with the 2005 post, just a quite different approach and attitude. In fact, I believe the two posts are entirely consistent: Republicans bad, Democrats good.

Rob- Good thing you're not in this guy's Dartmouth class. He's flunk you!

The fact is, it is news that Obama's poll ratings are falling. Just because Nyhan says that is not news to him, doesn't mean it is not news to other people. Nyhan neglected to mention that Republicans typically run into a strong headwind of media attack from the get-go, like Bush. Obama, on the other hand, has benefited from the media lap-dogs. So when a guy who has a strong media shield, who has been lauded as a type of new messiah, stumbles, that is news! I doubt this Nyhan guy was writing six months ago that something like 38% of voter would "strongly disapprove" of Obama by mid July, 2009. No one expected that!

So the news is that the incompetent fool who had millions literally worshiping him would stumble so badly and make so many mistakes in such a short period of time.

We can only hope he's another Carter and we'll be rid of him soon enough. Yeah, I want him to fail, but hey, he's doing that without any help or push from my side!

Obama's approval drop not surprising,.. not to me that is for sure. F-ing wings made of wax idiot.

Bush was far more unpopular in Sept., 2007 than Obama is today. (Approval Rating minus Disapproval Rating of -15% for Bush then vs. +11% for Obama now.)

I believe this difference was entirely caused by how the media covered these two President. My evidence is that Obama has been a worse President than Bush by objective criteria.

Bush's unemployment rate in 2005 was a disappointing 5%; Obama's is twice as bad at nearly 10%. Bush's irresponsible budget deficit was over $300 billion, but Obama's is over $1.8 trillion -- around six times as bad.

It's true that Bush's war in Iraq wasn't going well in 2005, but Obama's war in Afghanistan isn't going well today. BTW in support of my thesis regarding the media, note how differently they covered American soldiers deaths in Iraq in 2005 vs. how they cover such deaths in Afghanistan today.

Well I'd imagine the difference is in the amount of deaths which was a hell of a lot more in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 than it is or ever has been in afghanistn.

Plus Bush had Katrina and the Schiavo overreach to deal with.

I grow tired of this tit for tat stuff. It should be obvious that Obama doesn't own the unemployment rate anymore than he owns a deficit whose fiscal year starts before he was even in office (FY 2009 started last october... it was already projected at 1.2 trillion).

Go find someone else to cry to about the mean old liberal media.

Afghanistan is no Obama war. He's just trying to get thigs better there. You cannot say Obama would have started this war in the first place. The rightwing war mongers have brought all these problem the economy is facing. Period!

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