Posted on 07/13/2017 11:24:02 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Now here’s an interesting result. Three presidents, three metrics — and in each case the biggest problem for each man was different than it was for the other two.
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The silver lining for Trump is that, for all the criticism he draws in the media about pushing bad policy or doing a poor job as president, that’s not what sticks out to his critics. Overwhelmingly anti-Trumpers are anti mainly because they disdain Trump the man, not Trump the ideologue or Trump the C-in-C.
For definitional purposes, “personality” includes things like “not presidential/bad temperament/arrogant/obnoxious” and “inexperienced/doesn’t know what he is doing” while “broad performance evaluations” encompasses “disagree with what he is doing/doing a poor job” and “not fulfilling his campaign promises/all talk and no action.” (“Issues/specific policies” is self-explanatory.) For anti-Obamaites in 2009, it wasn’t personality but policy that drove most objections. And for Dubya in 2001, it was neither. Rather, it seems, most anti-Bushies basically just thought he was doing a poor job of leadership.
How much of that split is circumstantial and how much is essential? For instance, it’s no surprise that most of the backlash to Obama at this point eight years ago was driven by policy. The guy had just rammed through the stimulus in response to the financial crisis and was eyeing a massive leftist overhaul of the health-insurance industry. If you were a right-wing Obama critic, obviously it was the “transformational” potential of Obama’s presidency while he had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate — health care, guns, immigration, you name it — that kept you up at night. The first six months of Bush’s presidency were mostly uneventful by contrast, blunting any strong objections to him on policy grounds. Dubya also had an easy charm that kept non-ideologues on his side personally, at least until the darker days of Katrina and the Iraq War. Objecting to him on “broad performance” may have been the most popular criticism of him by default. Trump, on the other hand, is the guy responsible for the “Access Hollywood” tape, who once goofed on John McCain for getting captured by the VC, who answers questions about Putin murdering journalists by reminding people that America does bad stuff too, who still attacks critics personally on Twitter, and on and on. And Trump is larger than life as a personality, possibly the most ubiquitous human being who’s ever lived at this particular moment in time in this particular media culture. He was a tabloid curiosity turned national celebrity turned TV star turned president. It’d be weird if his detractors didn’t react to his personality first and foremost given how much the Trump persona defines every political question now.
Also, how does one assess Trump on policy? Which policy? The guy’s a globalist or a nationalist, a hawk or a dove, depending on which advisors were the last to speak to him on a given day. As far as I can tell, he’ll sign pretty much anything Ryan and McConnell hand him on health care in the interest of just getting the damned issue off the table already.
There’s another wrinkle, though. If I understand the poll correctly, Gallup’s asking people to pick which of the three metrics most explains their objections to the president. That is, it’s not necessarily that anti-Obamaites thought he was doing a good job on “broad performance” in 2009. It’s that, forced to choose between “broad performance” and policy as the subject that worried them most, they chose policy, understandably. Applying that logic to Trump, we should be careful about concluding from this that Americans are mostly comfortable with him on policy and “broad performance” just because so many choose personality when asked what they dislike. Personality is the standout objection but possibly not the only objection. It may be (and probably is) that Trump-haters would also uniformly give him poor marks on “performance.” It’s just not the first thing that jumps to mind when they’re asked, “What’s your problem with Trump?”
By the way, the quirk in different reasons for disapproving of each president didn’t repeat when Gallup asked people why they approved of them. For each of the last three presidents, the main reason given for approving of them was “broad performance.” Interestingly, though, Trump’s approval was divided more evenly among the three categories than was Obama’s or Bush’s. For Bush the performance/policy/personality split was 50/9/24. For Obama it was 41/40/15. For Trump it’s 38/33/24. The pro-Trump view of that is that the current president has more facets to his appeal than the previous two did, which may explain how he built a winning coalition. Some like his populism, some like his leadership, some like that he’s a plain-spoken “fighter.” The anti-Trump view is that even many Trump fans don’t think his performance thus far is all that good, so they’re forced to opt for one of the two other categories. It’s interesting to me that the share who say they approve of his personality is only equal to Dubya’s share even though, as I said, Trump’s persona looms so largely over his presidency. Maybe that’s a subtle judgment even by some fans who otherwise like him that the combative Twitter squabbling is a little out of control right now.
They should have been around to see President Lyndon Johnson.
Are you drawing a distinction between the Viet Cong and the NVA?
All the nevertrumpers still neverTrumping I read hate Trump for hist personality.
Well, since they’re not at all the same organization, yes, I guess I am. Were the Gestapo and the Luftwaffe the same? The NKVD and the Red Army? The Hessians and the Royal Scots Guards?
Yeah, I remember we had a boss in a large company that no one liked. I worked under him & I got along well enough with him but he was an A-hole.
His unit got a lot of work done.
Thank you. Unlike you, many people do lump them together as if they were the same.
I actually like his personality. But did they never hear the old expression, ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover?’
I like his personality and those who don’/t are blithering idiots and/or pajamaboys/snowflakes who don’t know what a REAL man/REAL LEADER is like!
It's like the old question "why do you buy Playboy"?
a) newsmaking interviews
b) thought-provoking articles
c) pictures of naked women.
c) might have been the true answer but b) sounds a whole lot more socially acceptable.
Objecting to Obama's policies sounds the least socially upsetting.
Since the end of FDR's first term, Johnson County has been solid for the R candidate. There was one outlier in 1992. Perot grabbed 25% and Bush got 43% with 30% going to Clinton. It dropped from 57% in 2012 to 46% in 2016. Hillary got 44% and the rest went Third Party.
I think the Obama numbers were about right regarding policy. During 2010 elections, many states put the individual mandate on the ballot as a question/issue. It got crushed in states he’d carried comfortably in ‘08.
Trump derangement syndrome is real.
A new class of whacko lefists and whacko democrats has been created.
Some want lead. They may get it.
Its so bad that one cannot wear a Trump T-shirt to the neighborhood grocery store......some leftists dem whacko will attack you.
We need to wear those T-shirts.
The type that hate trump do so because they were told to by those that they actually believe are more enlightened then they are.
every day liberals actually believe everything Anderson cooper says because hey he is Anderson cooper or if they don’t believe what they are told by people like Anderson cooper they will repeat the lie because the end result is all they are interested in.
Liberals trust that those leading there movement have good reasons not to be truthful and they are enlightened like there leaders because they realize that the lie is for those not enlightened like they are.
The type that hate trump do so because they were told to by those that they actually believe are more enlightened then they are.
every day liberals actually believe everything Anderson cooper says because hey he is Anderson cooper or if they don’t believe what they are told by people like Anderson cooper they will repeat the lie because the end result is all they are interested in.
Liberals trust that those leading there movement have good reasons not to be truthful and they are enlightened like there leaders because they realize that the lie is for those not enlightened like they are.
The type that hate trump do so because they were told to by those that they actually believe are more enlightened then they are.
every day liberals actually believe everything Anderson cooper says because hey he is Anderson cooper or if they don’t believe what they are told by people like Anderson cooper they will repeat the lie because the end result is all they are interested in.
Liberals trust that those leading there movement have good reasons not to be truthful and they are enlightened like there leaders because they realize that the lie is for those not enlightened like they are.
This is where we are as a society. Job performance is irrelevant, the question “is are you likable?”
A leading indicator of electability is physical appearance.
Universal suffrage is undesireable for stable government and society.
So you are saying that the Californians should not be allowed to vote?
Pure garbage from a Trump hater .
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