{"id":24627,"date":"2011-11-30T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T18:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24627"},"modified":"2011-11-30T07:07:41","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T13:07:41","slug":"everything-old-is-new-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=24627","title":{"rendered":"Everything Old Is New Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a brief burst of nostalgia from my teens earlier this week.<\/p>\n

I was filling in for Tom Taylor on the night shift at KEYJ on a lonely, chilly Sunday night when the AP said that Iranian “students” had sacked the US embassy. \u00a0Jimmy Carter was president – and, I figured, he would be for four more years \u00a0“I mean”, thought the young Democrat-leaning Mitch mind, \u00a0“who do the GOP have? \u00a0Baker? \u00a0Reagan? \u00a0Huh?”<\/p>\n

The Iranian “students” are back at it – and\u00a0so is the Democrat party’s out-of-his-depth President<\/a>\u00a0(emphasis added):<\/p>\n

President Obama’s slow ride down Gallup’s daily presidential job approval index has finally passed below Jimmy Carter, earning Obama the worst job approval rating of any president at this stage of his term in modern political history.<\/p>\n

Since March, Obama’s job approval rating has hovered above Carter’s, considered among the 20th century’s worst presidents, but today Obama’s punctured Carter’s dismal job approval line. On their comparison chart, Gallup put Obama’s job approval rating at 43 percent compared to Carter’s 51 percent<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As the story notes, Carter was well below Obama’s current numbers; Americans actually rallied around the president after the crisis erupted; Carter worked long and hard to squander that national mandate.<\/p>\n

How does this compare with other presidents’ first terms?<\/p>\n

According to Gallup, here are the job approval numbers for other presidents at this stage of their terms, a year before the re-election campaign:<\/p>\n

— Harry S. Truman: 54 percent.<\/p>\n

— Dwight Eisenhower: 78 percent.<\/p>\n

— Lyndon B. Johnson: 44 percent.<\/p>\n

— Richard M. Nixon: 50 percent.<\/p>\n

— Ronald Reagan: 54 percent.<\/p>\n

— George H.W. Bush: 52 percent.<\/p>\n

— Bill Clinton: 51 percent.<\/p>\n

— George W. Bush: 55 percent.<\/p>\n

What’s more, Gallup finds that Obama’s overall job approval rating so far has averaged 49 percent. Only three former presidents have had a worse average rating at this stage: Carter, Ford, and Harry S. Truman. Only Truman won re-election in an anti-Congress campaign that Obama’s team is using as a model.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just saying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a brief burst of nostalgia from my teens earlier this week. I was filling in for Tom Taylor on the night shift at KEYJ on a lonely, chilly Sunday night when the AP said that Iranian “students” had sacked the US embassy. \u00a0Jimmy Carter was president – and, I figured, he would be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24639,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24627\/revisions\/24639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}