Trump “beating” Lincoln? Well, he wasn’t ever going to take Illinois vote

How over-bloated is the ego of President Donald J. Trump? He’s the guy going around saying he’s the most popular Republican ever – even topping one of the Republican Party’s founders, Abraham Lincoln.

Besmirching the rep of Honest Abe?

Of course, the fact that Trump would say he’s bigger than Honest Abe, so to speak, is predictable. If he really wanted to engage in overbearing egomaniacal rhetoric, he’d claim he’s bigger than Reagan.

EXCEPT THAT THEN, former President Ronald W. Reagan has surviving family members who would immediately rush out to “clean his clock,” so to speak. The Lincoln family line of descendants came to an end several generations ago.

So who’s about to challenge Trump’s nonsensical claim?

For the record, Trump was basing his claim off a poll showing that amongst people inclined to vote Republican, some 90 percent think favorably of The Donald. Which could be true – a recent Gallup Organization poll of Trump’s popularity shows 88 percent of Republicans favor him.

Compared to 37 percent of people who call themselves political independents, and only 9 percent of those who are Democrats. None of this is surprising.

NOT EVEN THE fact that Trump feels compelled to bloat his political significance with this trivial tidbit. Does it really mean much that the people who voted for Trump in the first place support their action of 2016 – or that the people who didn’t want him back then still can’t stand him!

TRUMP: The Man of the Over-bloated Ego

Or that Trump is the kind of guy inclined to believe that only certain people in our society matter. Those who didn’t like Trump in the first place, the hell with them, is probably his honest attitude.

I noticed that CNN felt compelled to do a story about Trump’s claims, saying that just about every Republican who has been president in recent years has had overwhelming favorable approval ratings amongst Republican voters.

And that there is no credible polling data remaining from the 1860 and 1864 election cycles to show us just how popular Lincoln really was amongst the American people.

'Bigger than Reagan' would be a real fight

OF COURSE, CONSIDERING that the election and inauguration of Lincoln as president was so unpopular that it caused officials in 11 southern states to talk of trying to break away and create their own nation (the whole Civil War was about whether such an action was legitimate), it wouldn’t surprise me to learn the noble image of Honest Abe held in Illinois isn’t universal.

Even if Lincoln did ultimately get his image on the penny – and the five-dollar bill. What will Trump ever get; other than his name on a batch of tacky buildings that society as a whole will celebrate when the day comes that they are reduced to rubble!

Considering that many of the kinds of people who now support Trump are the ones who also are determined to look back upon the Civil War as the “War for Southern Independence,” it may well be that amongst Trump supporters, they look more favorably upon him than that of Abraham Lincoln.

Trump may be truthful, but his ridiculous claim goes a long way towards explaining just what is wrong with this Age of Trump our society is now in.

I’VE ALSO NOTICED that some people are bringing to mind that moment from 1966 when John Lennon of the Beatles said he and his co-horts were “more popular than Jesus Christ.”

Is John Lennon more popular than Trump?

Which had an element of truth if you consider many of that era were shallow enough to be more concerned with pop music than religion. Lennon’s statement wasn’t really anything to be taken as a compliment.

So the idea that Trump is more popular than Honest Abe? I suppose it’s not like he said HE’S bigger than Jesus? Although I wonder if the kind of people inclined to support Trump would forgive him for such a blasphemous thought because they’d like how the very notion would offend people of sense.

Such as those of us of Illinois, where Lincoln remains our biggest political name in U.S. history. Ah well, it’s not like Trump was ever going to get Electoral College votes out of Illinois or would be a political asset to any Republican running for office in the Land of Lincoln.

  -30-

Illinois may be Midwestern island of distrust, but few think much of Trump

We’ve now endured just over a year of Donald J. Trump as our nation’s president and have even seen the sight of the Orange one delivering a State of the Union address.

Does anybody like Donald Trump?

What does it say that only 38 percent of the public approves of his performance – far less than most past presidents. Even Barack Obama, who at this point in his presidency had a 57 percent majority of the people approving of him.

THE GALLUP ORGANIZATION showed a state-by-state breakdown this week of what we think of the Trump administration.

We here in Illinois give the man a 33 percent approval rating, slightly lower than the national average and less than all the surrounding states.

But it probably should be noted that even in places like Indiana, Iowa, Missouri Wisconsin, Trump does not exceed 50 percent approval amongst those that Gallup surveyed.

In the land of Hoosiers, a place that gave Trump Mike Pence as his vice president and a place that Trump likes to praise as a model for what Illinois and Chicago ought to try to be like, Trump only gets a 44 percent approval rating.

IN FACT, ONLY 12 of the 50 states give Trump a 50 percent-or-more approval. The only one of those anywhere near to us is Kentucky (51 percent) – which borders up against the southern end of Illinois, but is a land where the locals like to point out that they’re closer physically and in spirit to places like Jackson, Miss., than to Chicago.

Pence presence not enough to make Hoosiers like Trump

I’m sure on some level, these figures will bother Trump – although I’m sure he’ll come up with some nonsense rhetoric intended to make it appear as though the American people adore him.

Will it rival Sally Field’s Oscar acceptance of 1985. “You like me, you really like me.” Which sounded cutesy and adorable coming from the “Places in the Heart” actress, but would most likely sound insipid coming from Melania’s husband.

As for Illinois, the notion of a 62 percent disapproval rating sounds right, although I’m sure rural parts of central Illinois won’t want to believe it.

Did we really like her?

THEY’RE THE PARTS of Illinois that Gov. Bruce Rauner is relying upon if he’s to have any chance of winning a second term in his office. But for the statewide disapproval to be that high probably means a Chicago disapproval is in the 80s (percentile).

That’s just a guess on my part. But it would appear accurate, particularly since Trump used his first year in office to make more than his share of barbs against our home city. This would be payback.

We wouldn’t have any love lost for a foul-mouthed man who besmirched our otherwise elegant urban skyline with that self-promoting, not-quite-1,400-foot-tall structure that has the feel of a bully trying to overpower its surroundings.

Will we someday sing similar praises to Obama?

I know there are those who will try to claim Chicago is some sort of aberration not only in the nation but particularly with the Midwest.

BUT THEN YOU look at the Gallup findings and show that the man known as Trump isn’t really that beloved anyplace. In Iowa (52 percent disapproval), Michigan or Wisconsin (both 55 percent disapproval) or Minnesota (58 percent disapproval).

The blowhard’s rhetoric has worn thin, and we’re possibly stuck with three more years of his administration.

It almost seems as though a new generation will be singing the question, “Where have you gone, Barack Obama?” just as Simon and Garfunkel once lyrically pondered the same of Joe DiMaggio. That fact, I’m sure, would be the biggest blow to the Trump ego and the sensibilities of those who voted for him.

Is this really our nation's only hope?

As for the rest of us? We can wonder about the future (a la the sensibilities of Matt Groening); one in which a "President Lisa Simpson" bails us out, with the help of her ne'er-do-well brother, Bart.

  -30-

Do we really wish we still had the Obamas to kick around politically?

I’m sure for the ideologically-minded amongst us, the news of recent days has been particularly dreadful.

Most admired? Invited to royal wedding?

For Barack Obama keeps cropping up in ways that remind us he will be remembered as a respected public official, no matter how much the ideologues want to disrespect his memory.

WHILE THE CURRENT occupant of the Oval Office most likely will never be taken all that seriously – no matter how many times the ideologues rant and rage that he is the ideal of what a president ought to be.

For what it’s worth, I’m not getting too worked up over these particular news reports because I’m fully aware we’re in that time period between the holidays. It’s the end of 2017.

Anybody with sense is finding reasons to take time off. Little of significance (unless it’s dismal) will happen this week. Meaning a lot of trivia will manage to find its way into filling up space and air time for news reports this week.

So am I really getting all giddy that Prince Harry wants Obama invited to his wedding to Northwestern University alumnus Meghan Markle, and British officials are trying to urge him not to issue such an invitation out of fear that Trump will take it as a personal snub against himself?

Feeling snubbed by Brits AND Gallup?

IS IT REALLY all that interesting that Obama gave an interview to the prince who most likely is too far down the royal pecking order to become King of England? Yes, Harry has a program broadcast by the BBC, and from what I gather, the most interesting thing Obama said was that he’s still getting used to having to cope with traffic – rather than his presidential days when security would ensure the roads were cleared for his path and no one caused him a delay.

Or as the president said, “I didn’t experience traffic. I used to cause traffic.”

I could care less about presidential traffic jams. As for Trump’s ego, I don’t doubt he would find reason to take offense to an Obama invitation. Particularly since the whole purpose of a Trump presidency thus far appears to be to erase any evidence that Obama ever was the nation’s chief executive.

'16 voters AND '17 polls prefer Hillary

Which probably is what Trump’s voters most want. The ability to go into denial that they are so far removed from the mainstream of society, and that all their talk of “making America great again” is more about ensuring the exclusion of people so unlike themselves.

WHICH IS WHY I’m sure those individuals are shocked and appalled at the latest Gallup Organization study – the one that says Obama is the “Most Admired Man” in the United States. Which I’m sure is made worse by the notion that Hillary Clinton is the “Most Admired Woman.”

Because to the ideologues, it’s not so much that Trump ought to be thought of as “Most Admired,” but those two individuals are supposed to be the most repulsive examples of what our society offers. Even though to the majority of us, it’s Trump who fills that role.

Although when one looks at the figures Gallup offers, it becomes clear there is no dominant persona that our society thinks highly of.

Bush's No. 2 higher than Trump

For the second-most Admired man in our society? It’s a tie between Pope Francis and George W. Bush – which, if you think about it, may be a concept even more appalling to the Trump types than the presence of Obama.

WHILE AS FOR the women, our city’s formerly very own Oprah Winfrey came in second, while former first lady Michelle Obama finished third – in a tie with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Michelle falls right behind Oprah

As Gallup points out, this is the sixth straight year Obama has been “most admired,” which means that all of Trump’s rancid rhetoric hasn’t really diminished the strong sentiments some of us feel toward him. It just means those in support of this “Age of Trump” are just very loud about shouting out their attacks to make sure they’re overheard amongst the majority of us.

And as for Trump, he didn’t even factor into the rankings. Heck, even Ron Paul, Ted Cruz and Mitt Romney got minimal support for “Most Admired.”

Which makes me believe all the more that Trump-ites live in their own little world, and they think the majority of us (including the Obamas) should have to live there with them in a place of subservience! Ugh!!!

  -30-

Kennedy niche in our collective memory only now coming into focus

We’re at the half-century mark – 50 years Friday since the moment when someone with objections to then-President John F. Kennedy’s existence decided to take the matter into his own hands with a rifle.

Half century-old newsprint ...

Yet in the very acknowledgement of the fact that it takes time for the people to figure out what they think about anything, it is not the least bit surprising that it is only now we’re starting to figure out what we think of those two-and-a-half years that Kennedy was president.

WE’RE ALL NOW realizing that those ideologues of the 1960s who screeched and screamed that Kennedy was a subversive were just being ridiculous. A pair of recent polls by the Gallup Organization shows that not only does Kennedy get the highest-overall approval rating of 20^th Century presidents, he also has the closet partisan split.

Both people of Democratic and Republican partisan leanings look favorably on the days of JFK. By now, enough time has passed that the trash talk of the past has withered away.

Now my point is not to present a Kennedy love-fest of any kind. Personally, I think the man died way too soon before he could accomplish acts that would have given his presidency a lasting legacy.

JFK and the whole concept of the “New Frontier” and “Camelot” is all about a promise that went unfulfilled.

BUT IT SEEMS to take us time to make that realization. As evidenced by another recent Gallup poll – one that judged the most recent presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Republican partisans are determined to believe that Obama will ultimately be judged by history as the worst president.

... making somebody rich on eBay. But, ...

Although if the experience we had in Chicago in coping with the “Council Wars” of the mid-1980s is any evidence, it seems that the people who ultimately will be remembered as the “worst” are the ones whose ideological taint is such that they devoted all their time to thwarting Obama.

There are those people amongst us who are going to have to come up with some serious apologies for their current actions – or else live with the permanent taint of scuzziness that they’re painting themselves with now!

... how much of its "fact" ...

IT MAY WELL turn out to be the worst thing we will be able to say about Obama is that he was too weak and ineffectual to crush his political opposition – thereby preventing him from achieving his accomplishments.

Of course, this isn’t a one-way political game – those with Democratic Party leanings are determined to believe the years of Bush, the younger, will turn out to be remembered as the “worst” presidency of our time (too many of us don’t pay attention to anything before our time).

Some are determined to believe he will rank worse than Richard M. Nixon – although that would be an accomplishment since Gallup found evidence that he’s the one presidency that can unite the parties in the ill-will they remember of it.

Although my own comical memory of the demise of Nixon was that on the day he resigned, an encyclopedia salesman literally showed up at my parents’ doorstep. He literally had a display book to tout his product that included the fact that Gerald R. Ford had risen to replace the president – even though that had become official just a few hours before!

BUT AS FOR the Nixon/Kennedy campaign prior or the events of 50 years ago Friday, I can’t play that “game” some people like to talk about – the one in which they reminisce about where they were at the exact moment they learned Kennedy was shot.

I didn’t exist. My mother used to reminisce about the day (and when I was a kid used to keep Kennedy memorial tribute issues of Life magazine tucked away in a drawer). But it was another nine months before she and my father married – and nearly two years before I was born.

... still holds up today?

I actually wonder what she would have made (she passed away just over three years ago) of all the hoo-hah being spread about Friday. Here’s hoping that those of us still amongst us who remember the day have goals of what could have been achieved had Kennedy survived actually become reality someday.

And that the day will come when we can reach a non-ideological view of what our most recent presidents have meant to us.

  -30-

How much of today’s political rhetoric will someday be apologized for as silly?

It will be 150 years this week since Abraham Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address – his brief speech at the battlefield-turned-cemetery that helped to put the Civil War into a high, moral context – rather than just a bloodbath.

Significance not immediately realized

Yet there were those who disparaged Lincoln during his lifetime. He truly was a person who could never have comprehended the glory with which his image is now draped, based on anything that happened during his lifetime.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, the Harrisburg Patriot-News newspaper in Pennsylvania went so far as to apologize for what its predecessor (the Patriot & Union newspaper) wrote about the speech when it occurred.

The Patriot-News “regrets the error” that the Patriot & Union wrote that Lincoln made “silly remarks” that were motivated by partisan politics.

“Our predecessors, perhaps under the influence of partisanship, or of strong drink, as was common in the profession at the time,” were mistaken in their coverage, the 21^st Century take of the Harrisburg-based newspaper wrote.

Now I’m not about to say whether or not a reporter-type of the past was intoxicated (anything’s possible). Nor am I going to rant about how this correction was self-serving and did nothing more than to get a local paper some national attention.

Reason for recent presidential criticism

BUT WHEN I learned of this editorial, it couldn’t help but make me think of our modern-day situation. One in which our current president gets all the abuse the ideologues think he is worthy of, and where anyone who doesn’t share in their rancid rhetoric gets decried as somehow being “un-American.”

And with the fact that the Affordable Care Act’s implementation isn’t going smoothly, there are those who are willing to pile on to the president as well.

It should not be any surprise that the president’s approval rating isn’t all that high these days (40 percent approval rating, according to the Gallup Organization, with 53 percent disapproving of Obama’s performance).

There’s also a recent Gallup poll that says only 28 percent of people questioned think Obama will be remembered as an “outstanding” or “above average” president, with 31 percent saying he’ll be “average” and 40 percent saying he’ll be remembered as “below average/poor.” That's far from the worst -- both Presidents Bush are thought of less-highly, as are former presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon.

An impression from JFK's own time

THAT STUDY FOUND that John F. Kennedy (who this week will have been deceased for 50 years – too many morbid “anniversaries” in coming days) is regarded the most-highly in history amongst recent presidents.

Although I can recall many studies throughout the years that show Kennedy’s legacy approval rating, so to speak, bouncing up-and-down depending on the circumstances.

My point being that these things are flexible. They’re alterable. Nothing is carved in stone.

I wonder what it will be like when much of the rhetoric we hear and read about Obama these days will sound ridiculously dated, or just ridiculous.

WE PROBABLY SHOULD remember that much of the trash-talk Lincoln faced was just as over-the-top as what Obama gets these days – particularly from the ranks of trash-talk radio that seeks to make money by appealing to their Tea Party-type listeners.

Apology owed, although not likely to ever come

It has been eight years since I visited the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill., and my most vivid memory was of the exhibit devoted to the nasty rhetoric. Literally getting to read the libelous stories and commentary and hearing some of the slurs read aloud.

There are a lot more publications than the Patriot-News that probably owe Lincoln’s legacy an apology. How many publications are going to have their future incarnations issuing apologies to Obama (probably long after he’s departed this Earth) for the things they wrote, or allowed to be said without challenging them?

Will they be able to get away with just an apology – that will come across as self-serving in the future as the one Lincoln got earlier this month?

  -30-

No GOP front-runner? What’s the surprise

I wouldn’t have thought in these terms, but perhaps those people at Gallup are on to something.

For their latest poll points out how the next presidential election cycle is already starting to show a unique character. There isn’t a front-runner for the Republican Party nomination to challenge President Barack Obama (it’s highly unlikely any Democrat will challenge the sitting president).

WHILE MANY OF us want to think that March of 2011 is way too early to be thinking of who will run for president in November of 2012, it seems that Gallup’s polling throughout the years has found that the front-runners for president at this point usually go on to win the nominations.

In short, it’s not too early to know. But this year, it is. A recent poll by the people who gave us the mood that resulted in “Dewey Defeats Truman” showed that Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney were all virtually tied for support. Who’s to say how the actual campaign activity of Newt Gingrich (the one candidate who thus far has talked of running for president) will impact?

We really don’t have a clue who Obama will run against.

Gallup looked at their past polling related to presidential elections dating back to Eisenhower versus Stevenson in 1952, and could find only two cases where the eventual nominee hadn’t established himself by this point.

ONE WAS BACK in 2008 when John McCain’s hold on the nomination didn’t come until later in the cycle, and back in 1964 when the GOP wound up nominating the senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, to run against Lyndon B. Johnson.

So while Obama on Monday only had a 47 percent “favorable” rating (with 45 percent seeing him unfavorably), there seems to be confusion among his critics as to who is best to run against him. That confusion is going to add to the mess that will make it more difficult for the Grand Old Party to unite behind any one candidate.

OBAMA: A weak-link opponent?

In short, while there may well be some people in our society who despise the notion of “President Obama,” a significant number of us don’t feel that way. And we’re fully aware of the fact that the people who do feel that way have their own hang-ups that they should work through on their own – rather than try to convert the bulk of our society to their own warped image.

I also can’t help but notice that both of those GOP nominees who weren’t early front-runners for the presidential nomination ultimately went on to lose their respective political campaigns.

THE 1964 CAMPAIGN cycle, in particular, catches my interest. Because I wonder if the person who winds up winning the party’s nomination is going to wind up running the campaign that displaces Goldwater’s presidential bid for president.

You remember? He tried to run on the slogan “In your heart, you know he’s right.” Only to have that turned by his critics into “In your gut, you know he’s nuts” because of the perception that he’d be just a bit too eager to make the Cold War “hot” with use of the nation’s stockpile of nuclear warheads.

Nearly five full decades later, we can try to revise the history to claim that no one should have taken such rhetoric seriously, and that we should have listened to then-actor Ronald Reagan when he said we should vote AuH2O. Of course, it comes across as being as absurd as those people who try to claim Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s rants about Communism were right on the money.

It is Ideologue History 101, which I’m sure will have a new chapter 30 or so years from now about how the upcoming (to us) presidential campaign was an unfair attack on Palin/Huckabee/Romney/Gingrich.

IN MY MIND, the only significance up the upcoming presidential election is to see how ridiculous the campaign season gets, particularly with a GOP candidate trying to claim they’re being picked upon every time somebody calls them on their own outrageous rhetoric.

I particularly expect that if Palin (who according to Gallup had 16 percent support) gets the nomination, which is something I wouldn’t be surprised by. This is a woman who back in ’08 managed to take that trite cliché about “lipstick on a pig” and interpret it as a slanderous comment directed exclusively at herself.

That is the mood I expect for the next presidential election cycle, no matter who gets the nomination. Because I look at the list of prospective candidates and see a batch of people whose only real trait is a willingness to complain about what everybody around them is doing wrong – instead of telling us what they would do to improve society for all of us.

CHRISTIE: Mouth of Jersey



I even got my chuckle at the inclusion of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on that list. You know him as the guy who tries to cover up the short-comings of the Garden State by taking pot-shots at Gov. Pat Quinn and Illinois.

GALLUP’S POLLING HAD him at 1 percent support.

Which may be the ultimate sign that “the people” have sense enough to ignore a political windbag.

  -30-

It’s a partisan issue

People inclined to be opposed to President Barack Obama plan to use their new foothold on Capitol Hill to thwart him. The real question is how Obama will respond. Photograph provided by Architect of the Capitol.

The Gallup Organization came out with a new poll confirming what I largely had suspected to be true about the “mood” of the country when it comes to President Barack Obama and his policies, his critics aren't more numerous. They're just speaking more loudly.

The pundits of a conservative bent are trying to portray recent events as a sign that the country is turning against Obama. He’s losing the people who put him in office – we’re supposedly seeing that we made a very big mistake, and that we probably wish we could have first lady Cindy McCain right about now.

I HAVE ALWAYS thought this was more about political partisanship.

The people who on the day after Election Day in 2008 were upset that Obama won remain concerned, and were likely to spend the next four years doing what they could to thwart the goals of a president whom their life experiences make them inclined to distrust.

There have been times I have said the Obama first term as president would wind up being reminiscent of “Council Wars,” the nickname given to that era of Chicago government in the mid-1980s when the City Council used its authority to thwart the will of then-Mayor Harold Washington.

That was a blatantly racial period against Washington, while those people with racial hangups against biracial Obama have been more subtle. Perhaps that is the evidence that we as a society have made some progress.

WHAT I HAVE thought these recent electoral victories that pundits say are evidence of rejecting Obama truly are about are the people who never wanted Obama merely doing a better job of organizing themselves for those Election Days.

As a result, they won. And after Massachusetts, they may well have gained enough influence that they will be able to stop an Obama administration from doing much of anything. He certainly won’t be able to do anything that would make himself look good.

We’re entering a period of nothingness in the federal government – one that will last at least through the next presidential elections of 2012.

One only has to look at the Gallup poll released Monday to see this. That poll shows 82 percent of all people surveyed who identify themselves as Democrats have a favorable view of Obama’s performance. That is down from the 88 percent favorable Democratic rating he had when he was elected, and from the peak of 90 percent back in August.

IT’S NOT EXACTLY a serious drop. The people who got caught up in Obama-mania of ’08 likely are still supportive.

But Obama, it seems, now has the largest gap between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to favorable ratings.

Only 18 percent of the people who identify with the GOP have a favorable rating of Obama. To tell you the truth, with all the nasty rhetoric I read about Obama these days, I’m surprised to learn it’s even that high.

That is a drop from 41 percent of Republicans thinking favorably of Obama when he was inaugurated a year ago, which quickly dropped to 28 percent soon after he took office but is a slight uptick from the 17 percent low Obama hit among Republicans in August of ’09.

IF ANYTHING, THIS seems to be my generation’s contribution (I’m 44) to electoral politics – this absolute belief in ideology that makes the idea of bipartisanship so unworkable.

Gallup digs into their historical records and finds that no president prior to Ronald Reagan had larger than a 40-percent gap in their approval ratings between the two political parties.

It was “the Gipper” who brought about the concept of being detested by one group while loved by the other, and that sense has only grown in recent years. Obama’s split between the parties is even greater than that experienced by George W. Bush, who in recent days has taken to co-writing commentaries with former President Bill Clinton for the New York Times about the situation in Haiti.

Once he’s no longer president, will we someday get Obama working on joint projects with Bush?

SO EXCUSE ME if I think this change in the mood of the nation toward the president really isn’t anything more than the people who always were inclined to not want Obama speaking out a little more clearly.

The people who were apathetic about putting John McCain into the White House can now just speak out against what they oppose. I’d also hope for his sake that Obama now realizes the partisan mood of the nation is something he likely isn’t going to be able to overcome.

The Obama who used to like to talk about how he had Republican friends when he served as a state senator in Springfield, Ill., is going to have to realize that not all Republicans are like his one-time poker buddy, Kirk Dillard – the gubernatorial candidate who actually gets some criticism from GOP partisans because he was willing to be friendly with Obama.

If there’s anything I think Obama is guilty of in his first year of office, it is underestimating the partisanship he would face. Some people are just always going to say “no,” and his staff has to figure out a way to work around them in order to get things accomplished for the public good. That alone makes the State of the Union on Wednesday worth listening to.

BECAUSE THERE STILL is a significant portion of the public that is counting on his vision to prevail, which is why I wonder how much of the next two years’ inactivity will be blamed on Republicans for being obstructionists?

There still are problems that need to be addressed – no matter how much the Republican rhetoric rails on, there still is that 47 million estimated people without adequate health insurance.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: As of Monday, Barack Obama had a 48 percent overall approval rating, compared to (http://www.gallup.com/poll/125345/Obama-Approval-Polarized-First-Year-President.aspx) a 47 percent disapproval rating, which sounds to me like the country is split pretty evenly.

In today’s political environment, it appears that the time for bipartisan cooperation is once one leaves (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/world/americas/17prexy.html?ref=weekinreview) electoral office.

What’s the true purpose of a political poll?

I find polls taken during a political campaign to be intriguing. I find them to be an up-close look at the electorate and what they think about certain issues and people, and why.

Of course, most people find them confusing because they don’t truly understand what it is they should be looking for, or just what it is the poll results are really telling them. So they get frustrated when the poll results from weeks or months before Election Day vary so greatly with the actual election results.

WHEN LOOKING AT the results of a political poll, there are two factors to keep in mind. The “bottom line” figures of who is leading are often the most irrelevant part of the poll, and the accuracy of a poll depends greatly upon who is being surveyed.

All polls are 100 percent accurate in reporting what it is that the potential voters said. Whether the voters follow through with their talk is the key to determining whether the poll results will match the future reality.

The most important factor is to consider that polls take a small sample of people, figuring that by choosing them at random, one is getting a chunk of the U.S. population that is representative of the nation as a whole.

Election Day voting is more accurate than any given poll, particularly if activity at the polling place gets as ugly as in this 1858 Election Day cartoon in Harper's Weekly. Illustration provided by Library of Congress collection.

The Gallup Organization polls typically try to survey 1,000 people per day, before compiling results to tell us who is leading and who is not. Who’s to say the findings of any one day do not lean too heavily on one segment of the population, thereby distorting its results.

TAKE THE GALLUP polls for the Democratic presidential primary.

Gallup released results during the weekend that said Barack Obama had a 10-point lead in support over opponent Hillary R. Clinton (52 percent to 42 percent) on March 29. One day later, he still had a sizable lead – although his support dropped to 51 percent.

But on Tuesday (just two days later), the Gallup group released their latest daily results showing Obama leading Clinton 49 percent to 45 percent.

Did something really happen so dramatic during those days that Clinton suddenly gained in support? Could it be that Obama’s double-digit lead never really existed – except among the 1,000-or-so people who happened to get a telephone call from the Gallup group in the days leading up to those results?

OR PERHAPS A larger-than-usual batch of Clinton supporters received a call for the polls leading up to Tuesday’s results. Does this mean that Obama’s drop to a 4 point lead (which could really be only a 1 point lead if the margin of error is taken into account) never really happened?

I would like to trust the results of the other survey released Tuesday by the Gallup group – one that can be interpreted as meaning that the American people do not want to see an Obama/Clinton (or Clinton/Obama) pairing at the top of the Democratic ticket on Election Day.

Fifty-five percent of Democrats and independent voters leaning toward Democrats want Obama to have someone other than Hillary as his running mate.

Such results could mean that the voting public is realizing that the two candidates are too similar to each other and the presence of the other on the ballot would add nothing to the party’s chances of winning control of the presidency for the next four years come November.

BUT TO ME, the most significant figure offered up in this batch of poll results was 58 percent. That is the percentage of the 1,000 people questioned in recent days who said they would want Obama to be the vice presidential nominee – should Clinton win the Democratic presidential nomination.

That indicates that a good chunk of the population likely wants Obama to have some sort of presence in the White House, whether he gets to work in the Oval Office and live down the hall, or has to settle for life at Number One Observatory Circle (the official vice-presidential residence).

That could be the ultimate sign that Obama is handling the fiery rhetoric by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, properly. If people were truly as disgusted as some of the conservative pundits want us to believe, Obama’s figures would be dropping – people would be looking for him to whither away politically, not remain in a position of authority.

Now there’s always the possibility that I’m selectively looking for results to back up my own beliefs – I already cast my ballot for Obama and his pledged delegates from my congressional district. Of course, that’s also true for anyone doing poll analysis.

IT ALSO IS why I am skeptical when political people say they never trust the poll results done by commercial groups and often commissioned by large news media organizations that want to have something of their own to take credit for. They always say their own internal polls are more reliable.

Actually, they often ask different questions that are meant to inspire people to answer in a particular way – which can distort the results in terms of trying to determine the actual “mood” of the people, rather than the “mood” as the political person wants it to be.

Even when internal polls are more reliable, it more often than not is because political people have a better sense of what to look for in the numbers. Rather than trying to focus on the “bottom line” figure, one should look at any kind of breakdown of different groups and who they are supporting (or rejecting).

Getting a sense that any one group differs from the majority is the relevant fact. One can then decide whether a campaign strategy change would help shift that vote, or whether it should just be “written off” and attention focused on the groups that do like a particular candidate or strategy.

BUT SOMETIMES, POLITICAL people use polls to try to reassure themselves that their efforts are not in vain.

I still remember the 1998 Democratic primary election for Illinois governor, when in the final weekend before the election, the campaign of John Schmidt publicized its internal polls showing him with a slim lead over all three of his opponents.

The Schmidt campaign made a point of saying it was through discussing poll results because, with the election so close, they had the lead. What more was there to say?

In reality, the Schmidt campaign had a slim lead, but other polls showed they lost it in those final days. In fact, a good chunk of Schmidt backers chose not to even bother to vote, and he wound up finishing that primary in third place.

FINALLY, THERE’S ALSO the fact that pollsters are human. They can miss things.

Take the American Institute of Public Opinion (which has since morphed into the group that bears founder George Gallup’s name) surveys of the 1948 presidential election, all of which showed Republican Thomas Dewey handily defeating incumbent Harry S Truman – who had one of the highest unpopularity ratings ever for a president.

But they stopped polling a few weeks before the election, which meant they missed the factor of a lot of “third-party” supporters who decided to back Democrat Truman rather than Dewey of the GOP.

THAT FACT CAME out when, in the weeks after the election, Gallup’s people re-surveyed everybody they had previously polled to try to find out who changed their mind, only to find out that no significant numbers of Democrats or Republicans did so. Their after-election poll showed Dewey won (and the Chicago Tribune would have been accurate).

Polls are only as good as the information that goes into them. Which is why the political people are not wrong when they spout their cliché “The only poll that matters is Election Day.”

An actual vote is always more accurate than a promise of a vote.

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