E&P Editor: "Crisis almost without equal" Posted by: McQ
on Friday, April 21, 2006
Would someone get Greg Mitchell, editor of Editor & Publisher, a cold glass of something to drink? In an editorial ominously entitled "A Crisis Almost Without Equal" he says:
Our president, in a time of war, terrorism and nuclear intrigue, will likely remain in office for another 33 months, with crushingly low approval ratings that are still inching lower. Facing a similar problem, voters had a chance to quickly toss Jimmy Carter out of office, and did so. With a similar lengthy period left on his White House lease, Richard Nixon quit, facing impeachment. Neither outcome is at hand this time.
Good grief. You'd think that this was the lowest approval rating any president has had ever had.
Well sit back and relax Greg. If you want ratings in time of war, check out Nixon and Johnson. And, well, if you want ratings, at some time or another, lower than Bush's present rating, check out just about any past president at some time in his presidency:
Those ratings include Lyndon Johnson's 35%, Richard Nixon's 24%, Gerald Ford's 37%, Jimmy Carter's 28%, Ronald Reagan's 35%, the elder George Bush's 29% and Bill Clinton's 37%.
Bush has a higher rating than all but Clinton and Ford (and if you go with the RCP poll average, he has both by .1%)
Clinton left office with a 65% approval rating. Reagan with a 64%. Carter, otoh, only managed a 34%.
Look, "approval ratings" are simply the temperature of the public at a given time. And they can turn around on a dime. All this angst and ink about "low approval ratings" 7 months before an off-year election and 33 months before the next presidential election (in which, Greg, Bush isn't participating) is silly. And it's even sillier when you see a editor of a trade publication for, well, editors, having this sort of a crack up.
Chill out, Greg. Take a vacation. Do a little navel-gazing. When you get back tell me again how important that approval rating thing really is, in context this time, in the big scheme of things. And if you want to talk about it some more, let's do it when it actually may be important - like 33 months from now.
"For journalists of a certain age, Vietnam and Watergate were triumphs that they are eager to repeat. It doesn’t look as though that’s going to happen. Our advice to newsmen? Pray. "Lord, grant me the courage to change what I can, the serenity to accept what I cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Amen. Now stop crusading and report the damn news."
Oh Lordy, the King of Kerfuffle, Glenn Greenwald, will be on this like a bee on a honey, er, a bee on a honey. Anyway, he will take this as Revealed Truth and pump it up into the Crisis of the Century. Can’t wait to read it. Geez. The Angry Left is such an embarrassment. Oh well, it is better than reading his demagoguing about the scandal, that the NSA Scandal, wasn’t a scandal. Let me guess: "Unimaginable !! Crisis Without Equal - No "Almost" About It!". Ho-hum. Wonder what Neo-neocon has to say today?
Don’t mean to hijack your thread; I am just riffing on your theme of crazies over-reacting to liberal media provocations. After my prediction above, I slipped over to Mr. Greenwald’s blog to see if he had fulfilled my expectations and I see him quoting Scott Ritter under the title of "Proven Wisdom" [!!]:
"We created the perception of a noncompliant Iraq, and we stuck with that perception, selling that perception until we achieved our ultimate objective, which was invasion that got rid of Saddam. With Iran, we are creating the perception of a noncompliant Iran, a threatening Iran. It doesn’t matter what the facts are."
Well, it seems to me that someone must believe that it doesn’t matter what the facts are if they are positing that Saddam’s noncompliance was a "created perception". Wow. The stuff they can sell in the liberal cocoon. Can’t wait for MK to avow that, indeed, there is a crisis. Why is the left so predictable?
Speaking about ratings... Why don’t we establish ratings for everything? As an Internet user you, probably, have already tried to find ratings on some things which you consider to buy, use or get more information on. It may be services (hosting, design or movie rentals), public figures, consumer goods, articles or books, news, movies, beer, hotels, websites and much more. You have, perhaps, seen thousands of fragmented websites, discussion forums, which force you to dig for the information even more. With Ratingo you got one-stop shop, where you can find what people think (and why) about all you have been searching for before.
