Obama is the worst president since WWII

[Puppycow]

Average crowd including Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

45% of those polled believe we'd be better off if we had elected Mitt Romney in 2012... ouch.

About the same as actually voted for him at the time.

I don't think it makes sense to include a sitting president in the poll.

Indeed no. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

33% ranked Obama as worst, which means a two-thirds majority don't think he's the worst. Probably every sitting president would have got a similar result, because people are more concerned with the present than the past, and a lot of the people surveyed weren't even born yet or were too young to remember the LBJ administration or Nixon.

Does Obama have the lowest approval rating of any president since WW2? No:
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/data/presidential_approval.html

In fact, with the exception of Kennedy, Eisenhower and FDR, they've all had lower approval ratings than Obama.

Obama's lowest approval rating so far is 39%.
Both Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Truman all had lower approval ratings during their tenure. G.W. Bush had the lowest of all of those at 19%.

 

[timhau]

And the fact that we were fighting to defend a side that was A) not supported by the majority of Vietnamese and B) a dictatorship.

True, but to be fair, you were also fighting against a side that was about to set up a rather nasty totalitarian state.

 

[timhau]

Does Obama have the lowest approval rating of any president since WW2? No:
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/data/presidential_approval.html

In fact, with the exception of Kennedy, Eisenhower and FDR, they've all had lower approval ratings than Obama.

Obama's lowest approval rating so far is 39%.
Both Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Truman all had lower approval ratings during their tenure. G.W. Bush had the lowest of all of those at 19%.

Fachts, schmacts. They make for lousy headlines.

 

[Lisa Simpson]

What about the rest of the quote? Clearly the implication was exactly what my translation suggested.

Fine. 46% of Americans believe in creationism and 42% believe in ghosts. So I'm sorry for being skeptical about polling average Americans in regards to who is the worst President. And while Googling the percentages above, I found an article that 1 in 4 Americans believes the sun goes around the earth.

 

[Puppycow]

True, but to be fair, you were also fighting against a side that was about to set up a rather nasty totalitarian state.

When I compare Vietnam today to North Korea, the former seems rather benign by comparison. They also seem rather benign compared to the regime that was next door at the time: the Khmer Rouge. I wonder how things would have developed there if we had stayed out from the beginning (and how it would have affected events in Cambodia for example).

 

[Distracted1]

"W" took office with the Dow setting at 10,500, and left 8 years later with it at 8,000.

It has more than doubled in value so far during the Obama admin. Has any other president served during an increase of that magnitude?

 

[timhau]

When I compare Vietnam today to North Korea, the former seems rather benign by comparison.

True. Then again, getting your teeth knocked out and your nose broken seems rather benign compared to unanesthetized castration with a rusty knife.

 

[Regnad Kcin]

45% of those polled believe we'd be better off if we had elected Mitt Romney in 2012... ouch.

This alone suggests to me that objective reality is probably the direct inverse of what this poll purports.

 

[epepke]

That's what I just don't get. I can understand not liking Obama and disagreeing with his politics, but I'm not sure by what objective measure we can judge him a worse president than Bush.

To piggyback on your list, here are things that occurred on Bush's watch:

- 9/11

- The starting of two costly and protracted wars

- The mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath

- The crashing of the economy

Can anyone point to one thing on Obama's watch that competes with any of that?

You are making an error. You are thinking in terms of an objective standard. You can understand reality a lot better if you give that up. Start with the assumption that people who say that Obama is the worst really mean it. Then work backward from that and figure out what they must mean.

Nota bene: I am completely serious about this. I am not joking. At all. I can say this safely, because nobody will take me seriously anyway. That is the disadvantage of thinking about things, so you pretty much have to love understanding enough that you are willing to suffer for it.

So, that having been said...

9/11. Fantastic stuff, though it's probably wishful thinking on the behalf of the truthers that it was engineered by the government, it certaintly caused a hard right turn and provided a basis for believing in American superiority. There is nothing more an American loves than a 9/11, unless it's a Pearl Harbor or a Lusitania. That's because it gives us an excuse to go primate-fertilizer.

Two costly and protracted wars. Again, great. Yay military (until they come home broken, of course, in which case to hell with them). Boom boom boom. Mission accomplished. We're liberators. Everyone loves us. What, they don't? More boom boom boom.

Katrina is the easiest to understand. Katrina was God's wrath against the evil immoral New Orleans people, who were probably all gay, practices Voodoo and other Satanic rituals, and were even black, too. Bush looked out the window of Air Force One showing Bush overseeing Baby Jesus' a-stompin' and a-killin' the awful un-American heathen scum filth pigs.

The "crashing" of the economy was the best thing. Nothing since the Great Depression has consolidated more wealth into the hands of so few who, because they have the most wealth, are the most deserving of it. All of those great people now get to have real estate at a bargain price.

Now, you may has some difficulty believing why even the victims of these policies seem to think they are great, but that would, again, be an error. People don't vote in their best interests.

 

[Crossbow]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/obama-worst-president-wwii-new-poll-shows/

"“Over the span of 69 years of American history and 12 presidencies, President Barack Obama finds himself with President George W. Bush at the bottom of the popularity barrel,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll."

​

There is a good write-up of this poll on ‘Slate Magazine’.

In short, the article makes a good case for why the poll results read as they do because most of the Republicans hate Obama while about a third of Democrats think better of other Democratic Presidents. Therefore, the poll results are not really as damming as the headline makes them appear.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2...ich_obama_is_seen_as_the_worst_president.html

How to Read That Poll in Which Obama Is Seen as the “Worst President”
The conservative side of the media is all twitterpated by the new poll from Quinnipiac, its second in a very long-term survey that asks Americans who the best and worst presidents since World War II are. "A new Quinnipiac survey just dubbed him the worst president in six decades," …
Two-thirds of the Republicans and one-third of the Democrats called Obama the worst president since World War II. The result: Thirty-three percent of voters say he's the worst, and only 28 percent say George W. Bush is. And 35 percent of voters say Ronald Reagan was the best president. Hence the headline.
…
Once you process the old results, this poll looks like most polls in 2014—the president has lost independents, and voters have stopped hating George W. Bush so much. (He paints so well!) If you look at the crosstabs, the percentage of people calling Obama "honest and trustworthy" has actually stabalized and risen since 2013; the percentage calling him a strong leader, also stable.
…

 

[eeyore1954]

Is this a poll of historians or political scientists? Or just average people who also probably believe in creationism and ghosts?

No these are just average people. The same average people who elect the president. They can't possible know who is a good or bad president if they are naïve enough to believe in creationism and ghosts.

Personally I would say in one way who better to judge how good a president is than to ask those who are actually living under him/her.
Of course the downside is whatever has happened recently sticks in peoples minds.
This particular survey is more an example of how divided the political spectrum is. If you look at the answers by political affiliation especially to the other questions in the poll you will see.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-...y-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2056

 

[Monketi Ghost]

"W" took office with the Dow setting at 10,500, and left 8 years later with it at 8,000.

It has more than doubled in value so far during the Obama admin. Has any other president served during an increase of that magnitude?

Quiet, you. He's destroying America, dangit!

 

[eeyore1954]

That's what I just don't get. I can understand not liking Obama and disagreeing with his politics, but I'm not sure by what objective measure we can judge him a worse president than Bush.

To piggyback on your list, here are things that occurred on Bush's watch:

- 9/11

- The starting of two costly and protracted wars

- The mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath

- The crashing of the economy

Can anyone point to one thing on Obama's watch that competes with any of that?

9/11 had very little to do with President Bush.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the wars.
Is there any reason to think President Obama would have handled Katrina any better? Judging from the VA problems, his being unaware of the problems on the ACA website, his jumping the gun on the Shirley Sherrod speech and more I am not so sure. Katrina was a natural disaster whereas the VA problem was something President Obama had promised to fix and after years it only got worse.
I don't believe the crashing of the economy has much to do with President Bush although he did nothing to see it coming or stop it.

And finally don't feel bad President Bush was a close second.

 

[eeyore1954]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/obama-worst-president-wwii-new-poll-shows/

"“Over the span of 69 years of American history and 12 presidencies, President Barack Obama finds himself with President George W. Bush at the bottom of the popularity barrel,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll."

​

Poor Jimmy Carter, he gets no respect. Here is a poll he should have excelled at and yet he failed.

 

[sunmaster14]

WWII was one really terrible president.

A pretty bad precedent too. In any case, you owe me a new keyboard.

 

[Polaris]

You are making an error. You are thinking in terms of an objective standard. You can understand reality a lot better if you give that up. Start with the assumption that people who say that Obama is the worst really mean it. Then work backward from that and figure out what they must mean.

Nota bene: I am completely serious about this. I am not joking. At all. I can say this safely, because nobody will take me seriously anyway. That is the disadvantage of thinking about things, so you pretty much have to love understanding enough that you are willing to suffer for it.

So, that having been said...

9/11. Fantastic stuff, though it's probably wishful thinking on the behalf of the truthers that it was engineered by the government, it certaintly caused a hard right turn and provided a basis for believing in American superiority. There is nothing more an American loves than a 9/11, unless it's a Pearl Harbor or a Lusitania. That's because it gives us an excuse to go primate-fertilizer.

Two costly and protracted wars. Again, great. Yay military (until they come home broken, of course, in which case to hell with them). Boom boom boom. Mission accomplished. We're liberators. Everyone loves us. What, they don't? More boom boom boom.

Katrina is the easiest to understand. Katrina was God's wrath against the evil immoral New Orleans people, who were probably all gay, practices Voodoo and other Satanic rituals, and were even black, too. Bush looked out the window of Air Force One showing Bush overseeing Baby Jesus' a-stompin' and a-killin' the awful un-American heathen scum filth pigs.

The "crashing" of the economy was the best thing. Nothing since the Great Depression has consolidated more wealth into the hands of so few who, because they have the most wealth, are the most deserving of it. All of those great people now get to have real estate at a bargain price.

Now, you may has some difficulty believing why even the victims of these policies seem to think they are great, but that would, again, be an error. People don't vote in their best interests.

Nitpick: the Lusitania wasn't a cause for American entry into WW1.

 

[Lisa Simpson]

No these are just average people. The same average people who elect the president. They can't possible know who is a good or bad president if they are naïve enough to believe in creationism and ghosts.

They lack a certain amount of critical thinking skills.

 

[Lowpro]

They lack a certain amount of critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking skills are unnecessary in a poll.

 

[eeyore1954]

If they don't have the skills to determine who is a good/ bad president why let them elect one.

 

[sunmaster14]

9/11 had very little to do with President Bush.

Yeah, I don't get this complaint. Bush was president for a whopping 7 months and 22 days. The national security state is like a cruise ship with a frozen rudder. How long does it take to turn around? How long does it take even to figure out there's a huge problem? I wouldn't frankly blame the 9/11 security lapses on any one person in particular, but Clinton has got to be at least as culpable as Bush.

I agree with you wholeheartedly on the wars.

On both of them? The war in Afghanistan was the "good" war, remember? It was fully bipartisan (come to think of it, so was the Iraq War until the going got tough), and Obama actually significantly deepened our involvement there. 170% more US soldiers have died in Afghanistan under Obama than under Bush. So how the Afghanistan War can be blamed on Bush but not on Obama is beyond me.

Is there any reason to think President Obama would have handled Katrina any better? Judging from the VA problems, his being unaware of the problems on the ACA website, his jumping the gun on the Shirley Sherrod speech and more I am not so sure. Katrina was a natural disaster whereas the VA problem was something President Obama had promised to fix and after years it only got worse.

Good points. Bush got a bad rap for Katrina. FEMA is a distributor of funds and a training agency. It's really mostly administrative, but for some reason most people think it is some sort of superhero, search and rescue arm of the federal government. Katrina looked bad because (a) it was the "perfect" storm; and (b) the local governments of Louisiana and New Orleans did a horrible job.

I don't believe the crashing of the economy has much to do with President Bush although he did nothing to see it coming or stop it.

The housing bubble collapse wasn't Bush's fault. It was in some sense decades in the making, and a lot of it is the fault of government policies which had bipartisan support (especially the implicit guarantees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were favorites of liberal Democrats, if anybody). I think Bush did an admirable job of addressing the crisis in the little time he had left remaining in his administration. And he tried to do as much as possible to help give Obama a running start and the tools he needed. I feel like Obama dropped the ball on the recovery. It is not a coincidence that, 5 years on, we still have subpar growth. One would normally expect a huge bounce back from such a deep recession. There was one under Reagan, for example.

And finally don't feel bad President Bush was a close second.

Comparing Presidents is pretty stupid in general. They each face unique problems, and, like quarterbacks of football teams, they get way too much credit for successes and way too much blame for failures that happen on their watch. It makes more sense to compare ex-Presidents, and in that respect, Bush II is an excellent ex-President. He has remained dignified and respectful and eschews partisan criticism of his successor.