Notice how the doom and gloom about Obama is mitigated when one reads that Reagan, Clinton, Carter, Ford, Nixon and both bushes suffered similar fates. More importantly, notice that while the article gives the low approval ratings for a number of presidents - including the time in which it took them to hit the number - they only mention Saint Ronnie in passing, giving neither the low rating he achieved nor the time in which it took him to get there. Typical.
Obama's job approval rating falls to 50% in pollThe figure is a new low for the president in the Gallup Poll. He reached that point more quickly than most of his predecessors did.By Mark Silva
Reporting from Washington - President Obama, who won the White House with an electoral college landslide and enjoyed soaring public approval for the job he was doing in the weeks following his inauguration, has fallen to a 50% job approval rating in the newest daily tracking of the Gallup Poll released just now.
The new low for Obama in the Gallup Poll, which measured the president's public job approval at a peak of 69% after his inauguration in January, tracks other national polls, which recently have gauged his approval ratings at 51%.
Should the slide continue, Obama will by no means be the first president to slide below 50% in the Gallup Poll, which has been tracking public approval of presidents since Harry S. Truman.
But Obama has reached his new low more quickly than most of his predecessors did, according to Gallup. The percentage of people voicing disapproval for the job the president is performing also stands at a near-high of 43%.
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Slipping below 50% before November of the first year in office would represent "the third-fastest drop" since World War II, Gallup reports. Republican Gerald Ford slipped below 50% in his third month as president, Democrat Bill Clinton during his fourth month.
It took Republican President Eisenhower five years to fall below 50% in the public's eye, Gallup notes. It took both Republican George Bushes about three years. It took Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon more than two years.
(snip)
It's not an irreversible trend, Gallup points out:
Clinton and Republican President Reagan, who dropped below majority approval "faster than most other presidents," easily won reelection to a second term.The latest findings of the Gallup tracking poll come from surveys of about 1,500 adults conducted Tuesday through today, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-poll28-2009aug28,0,7306834.story