A Scientist Examines the Bush-McCain Challenge

4/5 and I bet I could do it with Hillary and Obama as well.

But then neither one of them is the most unpopular president of last 75 years, right?

Yes, Ara, neither they nor McCain is an exceedingly unpopular POTUS. Congratulations. I'll gladly convey upon you a PhD from The Obvious Institute. I'm just saying that I pay attention to both sides of America's political coin; even if I refuse to accept that a binary choice is the best that America can produce.

Make fun of Bush (and even McCain if you desire). I'll make fun of and denigrate all of them. Personal choice.

Can you back up "75 years" or are you throwing spaghetti at the wall? I'm not going to Google it, but your time period seems arbitrary. Hoover could probably beat Bush on the unpopular scale and maybe even Carter. I won't argue that Bush is not an idiot that deserves the scorn of the American public. He gets what he deserves.

Eric:

I'll gladly convey upon you a PhD from The Obvious Institute.

Why thank you. Sometimes these things do need to be pointed out -- after all, not everyone is as smart as you.

IWH ==> [ ]

I pay attention to both sides of America's political coin; even if I refuse to accept that a binary choice is the best that America can produce.

I hear you. By the way, can you identify the last time a third party candidate won the presidency? Not a trick question.

Can you back up "75 years" or are you throwing spaghetti at the wall?

I'm referring to the Gallup Poll's measurement of Bush's approval/disapproval numbers. They have polled this sort of thing longer than anyone else and their numbers reach back to the Roosevelt era. Perhaps I've rounded in error -- the real number might be somewhat less than 75 (for now).

In any case, these are contemporaneous measurements and not the opinion of an electorate that has tunnel-vision about how bad things are today compared to the good old days.

What's with the IWH you people use on this site? 'I was here'??

Third party, if you are using the generally accepted understanding of the term "third party" to be not a Democrat or Republican, then it would be Millard Fillmore.

The article you referenced explicitly points out in the sidebar that Truman had a lower popularity than Bush. Am I missing something?

Oh, and BTW, knowing that Clinton, Obama, and McCain are not the current US president is not a sign of a level of intelligence worth pointing out. It's a sign of doing slightly more than consuming oxygen.

OK.

IWH = Insert winky here.
ISFH = Insert smiley face here.
IJS = I'm just saying.

Look, it's a blog OK? Wait...what am I saying? You're reading this!

As for third parties, I wasn't specifying anything other than a party that wasn't one of the established two major parties at a given moment in history.

[Note: Fillmore isn't it -- he was the last of the Whigs.]

Truman had a lower popularity than Bush. Am I missing something?

No. I gave you the wrong link -- since that article was published, Bush's disapproval rating has gone higher than Truman's and he has sustained a sub-50% approval rating for more consecutive months than any other president in Gallup's polling records.

It's a sign of doing slightly more than consuming oxygen.

I understand several state universities are offering advanced degrees in that.

IJS.

FWIW, 3 outta 5.

Eric, I think you miss the point. When pressed, at several of the debates and throughout the campaign, Obama and Clinton, and even Edwards and a couple of the other Democratic candidates (notably Biden and Richardson) have gone out of their way to point out that the similarities on many of the important issues far outweigh the differences within the Democratic party.

McCain OTOH has made it a point, either directly or though his campaign and surrogates, to distance himself from Bush -- that he's a "maverick," an independent thinker, and as many pundits and beltway strategists have pointed out (see my post on Peggy Noonan) Bush is an albatross around McCain and the rest of the GOP brand's collective necks.

Unfortunately he has been on both sides of so many issues at one time or another (depending on which voters he was wooing or which lobbyist he was carrying water for) that his institutionalized pandering has aligned him with Bush on nearly every issue -- before or after he was opposed to the same policy.

But then again, you're a real smart guy, so I shouldn't have wasted my time pointing out the obvious.

[IWH] -- (And yes, I coined that silly abbreviation.)

Then there has never been third party candidate as the Federalists wouldn't qualify either. But TR did come closest with his Bull Moose run in the 1910s.

"...what am I saying? You're reading this!"
Yes, I know it's shocking, but I tend to do that.

My mistake -- John Fremont (not Abraham Lincoln) was the first Republican presidential candidate. So when Lincoln won in 1860 he wasn't really a "third-party" candidate.

Eric:

I'm just saying that I pay attention to both sides of America's political coin; even if I refuse to accept that a binary choice is the best that America can produce.

I wanted to pass along an electoral tidbit from the 2006 midterm elections and it was this: that the margin of victory for Sens. Claire McCaskill in Missouri and John Tester in Montana was less than the number of votes the Libertarian candidates received in each of those elections. This bolsters your point about the value of third party candidates, yes?