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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 29, 2024

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It should come as no great surprise that survey poll ratings of America’s best and worst presidents depend a great deal on whom they ask, and what key factors they address.

While imperfect, presidential approval and disapproval ratings offer useful snapshots of how different politically aligned population segments tend to rank popularity and job performance both during different stages of their times in office as well as in retrospect based upon longer-term legacy achievements and failures.

Many of these assessments must take very daunting inherited domestic and foreign events into account, which often reflect how well they manage blameless crises, hence producing large periodic approval/disapproval swings among the overall electorate.

Other polling results reflect unforced policy errors and judgment actions that ultimately turn out badly, often causing the opposition party to gain at least temporary advantage and dominance.

As for popularity, this is heavily influenced by an individual’s perceived authenticity and trustworthiness, leadership vision and values, experience and judgment, oratory and persuasive skills, charisma, and personability … altogether, that persona of seeming “presidential.”

Surveys ranking historical presidential approval ratings according to self-identified political alignments reveal radical, often opposite separations regarding which presidents warrant highest and lowest popularity and performance credits.

No time has this stark division been more evident than with the last two presidents, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

According to a YouGov poll that asked Americans of different partisan persuasions their views on presidents who have served to date, among Democrats, Donald Trump came up dead last. Only 8% had a positive opinion of the 45th president, while 88% have a negative one.

Among independents, Joe Biden and Richard Nixon were the least popular. Whereas Biden is disliked the most (53% dislike, 35% like), Nixon had the lowest “net favorability score,” referring to the biggest gap between the number who disliked him (50%) and those who listed him (27%). That made Nixon’s net favorability score -23% to Biden’s -18%.

Republicans in the YouGov survey ranked Trump’s favorability fourth of all presidents at 79% (just ahead of Thomas Jefferson at 78%), behind Abraham Lincoln (86%), Ronald Reagan (85%), and George Washington (84%).

Although Joe Biden had only been in office six months at that time, Republicans ranked him least favorite (83% negative vs. 11% positive). That ranking score was closely shared with his former boss Barack Obama (82% unfavorable, 13% favorable).

President Biden’s approval ratings among the general voting public have been taking a precipitous dive. Gallup reported that it has dropped from 57% to 40% since Jan. 16.

A February NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 56% of respondents believed Biden’s first year as president was a “failure,” versus 39% rated it a success.

As early as November 2021, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll indicated that nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) don’t want President Biden to run for a second term in 2024, including 28% of Democrats. Even 39% of respondents who voted for Biden last year said they hoped he won’t run for another term, while 50% wished he will.

Wide approval/disapproval swings during a presidential term are not uncommon.

Gallup poll of historical presidential approval statistics revealed general public ratings according to average totals during total terms of office, highest and lowest individual measurements, and assessments following the end of service.

It’s perhaps interesting to note that while President Bill Clinton had ranked 7th highest among Democrats, 18th with independents, and 34th by Republicans in the YouGov poll, despite being impeached he ended his second term with a Gallup 63% approval rating (higher than Obama’s 59%).

Our 33rd President Harry Truman, who began in 1945 at an 87% affirmative rate, ended in 1953 at about 30%. Nevertheless, he’s still regarded by many as a decisive and successful leader.

President George H.W. Bush’s approval rating reached 80% when he marked his first year in office. Ten months later, with his approval rating down to 54%, the Republican Party lost eight seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm elections.

Similar to his father, the 43rd U.S. President George W. Bush, went from a 90% high following the devastating Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, but then running straight downhill to end at only 32% favorability by 2009.

Richard Nixon, our nation’s 37th president, fared fairly strong from 1969 at about 50% approval — even hitting a 79% high in 1973 — until his Watergate scandal that year rapidly dropped him to 22% and forced his mid-1974 resignation.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), who preceded Nixon in November 1963 following the assassination of John F. Kennedy (JFK), began his presidency at his 79% approval high, descending during the unpopular Vietnam War to 44% by late 1969 when he voluntarily resigned.

President number 39, Jimmy Carter, started soon after taking office in January 1977 with a 75% approval rating which became undone by a record of economic stagflation (high inflation and unemployment), a 1979 petroleum crisis, and a 1980 Iranian seizure of American hostages that dropped his polls to 31%.

Jimmy Carter’s record as America’s worst modern era president had seemed secure up until the present when Joe Biden came along.

Each of three of America’s most popular presidents, Ronald Reagan (63% approval average), who succeeded Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike), and JFK, both averaging 58% approval, had recognized national security achievements.

Reagan is broadly credited with strategic policies that contributed to the demise of Soviet communism ending the Cold War; Ike had served as the supreme commander of western Europe Allied forces during World War II, and JFK is appreciated for deft and successful abatement of a U.S.-Russia Cuban missile crisis.

John Kennedy’s popular legacy has largely forgiven his administration’s disastrously failed April 1961 CIA-led Bay of Pigs attack intended to push Cuban President Fidel Castro from power. JFK will always be remembered, however, as the president of bold vision responsible for launching the first two humans (both personal friends of mine) to the moon.

Leading up to the present, the final jury remains out regarding how history will ultimately score Biden and Trump legacies.

Odds are that Donald Trump — who was impeached twice yet still holds strong popular support in his party — will seek another term in 2024, whereas Joe Biden, whose overall approval — including among independents — is tanking, will quite likely be a one-term White House resident.

And that, my friends, may well prove to be the best poll result of all.

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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