Bush the "popular" President

Duncan Black, aka, Atrios, challenges one of the stale pieces of conventional press wisdom about how Bill Clinton's "favorability" ratings during his Presidency were so much lower than his job approval ratings:

Clinton's favorability ratings were indeed lower than his job approval ratings, not surprising given that he cheated on his wife, but that's mostly because his job approval ratings were so high. It was a media talking point that people hated that nasty Clenis, but it really just wasn't supported by the numbers. Bush's personal favorability has for some time been in roughly the same range as Clinton's, or even lower, depending on the poll and precise time period.

Supporting his comments, he links to Polling Report.com for Clinton and also for Bush.

Bush's poll numbers still seem to be following the general pattern economist James Galbraith identified a couple of years ago: steadily down, with spikes around major events like 9/11 and the start of the Iraq War. See his Salon columns Bush's Hail Mary 02/09/04 and Coming to our senses? 05/22/04.

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