How the Presidents Stack Up
08 Jun
Written from wsj.com
A look at U.S. presidents’ job-approval ratings.
Truman became president after Franklin D. Roosevelt died at the start of his fourth term.
After a major heart attack in the fall of 1955, Eisenhower was elected to a second term a year later.
Kennedy’s ratings were well above 50% when he was assassinated.
Inheritor of the war in Vietnam, Johnson was unable to improve upon his inaugural highs.
Nixon struggled with Vietnam, too, but Watergate was what ended his presidency.
Appointed Nixon’s vice president after Spiro Agnew’s resignation, Ford finished Nixon’s term.
Carter made progress with the Camp David Accords, but the Iran hostage crisis ultimately hurt him.
Reagan survived two major downturns, during a recession and after Iran-Contra.
A reversal of his “No New Taxes” vow hurt George H.W. Bush, but the Gulf War was a diversion.
Clinton was stung by response to the Nafta trade pact, but floated atop impeachment concerns.
The Sept. 11 attacks prompted Americans to rally for George W. Bush, but the war in Iraq is wearing.
Sources: Gallup, AP, WSJ.com research?????????NOTES: Plotted points are the averages of all approval polls taken by Gallup in each three-month period of each presidency. The first two points for Johnson and Ford are for polls taken in their first two months. Key dates are marked next to the poll results for the three-month period in which they took place.
21 Responses
Andrew Vit
June 9th, 2007 at 10:27 am
1The one takeaway I get from a glance at the data is that Clinton is the only president to finish with a higher approval than when he started. Based on that fact alone, how could anyone argue that he wasn’t a “good” president?
Dave
June 10th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
2@1: because “good” is not measured by approval rates?
how comes that Carter was “ultimately hurt” by the hostage crisis when his approval rates rose afterwards?
Kevin
June 16th, 2007 at 11:10 pm
3While I agree with Dave that how “good” a President is isn’t measured by approval ratings, I do think that Bill Clinton was a good president. Perhaps a more indicative trend that shows the good health of the state under Clinton is the amount of stability in his approval numbers. Dubya’s plummeting and has been plummeting since 9/11; Reagan was a rollercoaster; Nixon was unstable and then took a nosedive from Watergate. It’s safe to say that Clinton is the true successor to JFK; they may have not been astoundingly important or morally clean, but they both led the country with remarkable stability and ability. Maybe there’s something to be said for smart, charismatic leadership in the White House, not inside status, not faith, and not the ability to compromise. (And if you didn’t catch theat, I’m trying to invoke some love for Obama here!) =]
mrofone
June 18th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
4How come the height of Clinton’s popularity was during the sexual scandal?
How come HW Bush’s popularity went UP after he broke his promise of “no new taxes”?
Solidius
June 21st, 2007 at 9:39 am
5Polls use statistics, it’s all about who you ask, and how you ask it.
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr (love for him, I think not) Not any Socialist. Raise taxes, socialized health care, strict gun control(If you argue this you get your MAN card revoked, because if your not man enough to protect your family, yourself, and people who can?t protect themselves, then natural selection should have already claimed you), social ambiguity, moral relativism, more “progressive” policies(IE steal from those who will, and do, and give it to those who don’t and won’t) rigggghttt that?s what we need more of. Clinton ?good?, well if selling missile technology to Chinese for campaign contributions, and not getting executed for it, well?.he was good at that.
And before I get the right wing/republican crap, I’m a libertarian(not a party libertarian).
jack
June 21st, 2007 at 8:52 pm
6I’m not a supporter of President Bush, but the last graph shows the invasion of Afghanastan somewhere closer to the middle of the year, if not slightly before it. Is it supposed to be accurate?
CP Miller
June 21st, 2007 at 9:28 pm
7“how could anyone argue that he wasn?t a ?good? president?”
I could, he was nothing more than a crooked lawyer from Arkansas, as was his wife.
Leslie Erentreich
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:02 am
8Clinton balanced the budget…which just so happens to be one of the most important jobs of the president. He cared about the children…children everywhere not just here. Most importantly the world loved him…standing ovation at the UN…and Little Bush…well his animated counter part “Lil Bush” just might have a higher ratings.
Kevcol
July 6th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
9Solidus:
You get your man card revoked for endorsing gun control?
Seems to me you need to be more of a man to defend yourself and your family withOUT a gun.
Look at the carnage that insane coward Cho Seung-Hui unleashed upon Virginia Tech — does that make him a man by your reasoning?
BTW, if you need a card to prove it, you’re more of a scared boy, anyhow.
DaveM
July 7th, 2007 at 12:13 am
10Leslie,
Actually Congress balanced the budget. The President only submits a budget. “He cared about the children”??? Hey, that’s great. Alas, not the job of a President. He’s not our Mommy or our Daddy. “The world loved him?” Hey, that’s great. But not the job of a President. “got a standing ovation at the UN”? Hey, that’s great. But how does that related to the duties of a President?
The only good thing we can say about Clinton is that he didn’t screw anything up. As for actually DOING anything, when compared to many of his predecessors, he really didn’t DO anything. Where’s Clinton’s equivalent of the Marshall Plan? Where’s his Great Society?. Where’s his Paris Peace Talks? Where’s his collapsing of the Soviet Union?
Anyone else find it curious the GHW Bush’s approval ratings went UP after it the highest level of poverty was reported?
The other curious thing is that Clinton’s failures seemed to HELP his approval ratings.
Jason
July 7th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
11What a lot of people forget about the clinton administration was the fact that clinton, during his sex scandal, shot missiles at civilian targets. Which resulted in hundreds of innocent lives to be lost.
Hey kevcol, when you use your 2nd amendment rights to carry a weapon, you get to keep your “man card”. No one is able, according to the constitution, to restrict my right to have weapons.
Food for thought: Early America had such a love for the right to bear arms, you were allowed to have any military grade weapon you could afford. ( IE. cannons, frigates)
MDK
July 8th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
12The reason people were allowed to buy military grade weapons in early America is that the government presumed that they would be used to protect the country (a militia or other organized group). It had nothing to do with a private citizen hoarding weapons so that they could feel like a “man”. It was necessary and even dutiful. Today we have a more organized internal security force and therefore the need for private citizens to own military grade weapons has vanished because the need for militias has as well.
Jeepien
July 9th, 2007 at 2:50 am
13Man who need big gun must have small pistol.
intonaco » Blog Archive » Comparative view on U.S. presidents from 1945 to 2007 (approval ratings)
July 10th, 2007 at 2:03 am
14[...] found (via stumbleUpon) this comparative view on U.S. presidents since 1945? and up to the midterms in 2007. The article hardly has any text, so the readers can pretty much interpret themselves. Below a [...]
Collude
July 16th, 2007 at 10:00 am
15I think it’s funny that people keep calling Clinton’s affair a misgiving or faltering. I admit the lying was wrong but the whole thing should have never been an issue in the first place. Who cares what he does with his personal life? He could dress up in a chicken suit and go to orgies for all I care as long as he does his job.
Presidential popularity graphs in a nutshell « Full Metal Cynic
August 23rd, 2007 at 9:40 am
16[...] To see them individually go here. [...]
Looney
September 28th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
17Why didn’t the sex scandal hurt Clinton? Simple: he picked a female intern. The type of sex scandals that end political careers involve homosexual relations and/or serious crimes–lying in response to a question that shouldn’t have been asked in the first place might technically be perjury, but it’s not the type of crime that anyone cares about.
xxx
November 30th, 2007 at 1:58 am
18hi interesting post thk you http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/agents/download/src/1/index..html see you
Pool
December 25th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
19very interesting
Squid
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:00 am
20Its sad that the press fed the Clinton affair as the reason for his impeachment. The reason for his impeachment proceedings was for the lying under oath in the court of law, not the affair.
If you count treason (selling missile secrets) and the fact that congress had to make a new law stating that politicians cannot receive funding from foreign powers because of Clinton, Gore, Hillary, and a majority of the DNC because of them receiving massive campaign contributions from China, you can’t really consider his presidency a great one. Even Nixon formed the DEA, EPA, had all the lunar landings, the SALT I/II talks with the Soviet Union and visited China, bridging the gap between our countries. Clinton had a terrorist attack on the US (World Trade Center Bombing), the attack of the USS Cole, and the Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya with no retaliation.
The media gives him praise for unemployment rates higher than that of the current “recession”. As far as the only similarities between Clinton and Kennedy is the media loved them.
Dillon
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:06 pm
21lol solidus got owned
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