According to a Gallup poll released Monday, 43 is now higher than 44. That is, former President George W. Bush is now more popular than current President Barack Obama with a 47 percent approval to 46 percent approval, respectively.
Republicans are rejoicing, but in the words of College GameDay’s Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!”
Both Bush and Obama are in the middle of their own respective polling trends.
Obama and the Democrats just suffered midterm losses, which, although they weren’t as bad as they could have been, still serve as crippling constraints to business as usual on Capitol Hill.
It would be absurd for such a Republican victory to occur in the midterms in November and Obama to have an approval rating of more than 50 percent. Any approval rating until the new Congress takes the oath and begins to serve is superfluous and meaningless.
Bush, on the other hand, two years removed from the most powerful (and stressful) position in the world, seems as likeable as your grandfather.
There’s no doubt the former president seems much more willing to talk recently.
That’s most likely because the one-year sphere of influence on the Obama administration, be it positively for Obama and negatively for himself and the Republicans with a reminder of Bush-era turmoil, or conversely with a quip that would negatively affect the public’s perception of the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats.
And others are beginning to speak more freely about their former boss.
Richard Clarke, special adviser to the president on cybersecurity, was the first Bush-era official to speak out against his boss’s foreign policy, and that was while Bush still held office!
After Obama was elected and before his first year was over, former Vice President Dick Cheney put in his two cents, and again Bush was uncharacteristically silent during this process.
So after keeping quiet for nearly two years, why is our former president becoming such an open book? Two words: Book tour.
With the release of his memoir “Decision Points,” the media became a literal moneymaker for Dubya. After all, the media were often more trouble for the former president than he had bargained, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to promise to keep their shoes on to do the interview.
All things considered, he’s doing something right. “Decision Points” is, at the time of this writing, the No. 1 best-selling hardcover nonfiction book on the New York Times bestseller list.
It’s currently the No. 7 best-selling book in the Kindle Store and the top-selling book in its hardcover edition on Amazon.
It’s even got me, a guy who identifies as left-of-center, wanting to read it.
Frankly, if I take “approval rating” at its original definition — approval of an official’s job performance — I think I’d concur that Bushie’s doing a heckuva job.
Sean Quinn is a first-year political science student. His column appears every Wednesday.
