The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[Ghoulish Delight]

WP headline: Obama: The most polarizing president. Ever.

Well, with that headline, CLEARLY they have some cut-and-dry hard evidence of that claim, right?

The ONE measure they present is the gap between Obama's approval rating within the Democratic party vs. his approval rating from Republicans. They point out that the gaps in his first 2 years of office were the largest for the first two years of any President. Okay, interesting point so far...

Except note the ONE chart from the study that they republished. It shows that Bush owns the TOP 3 SLOTS for the largest gaps in history, and 6 of the top 10. And if you read the writeup on Gallup's site, it points out that Bush's first two years were buoyed by post 9-11 good will (such as it was). And the WP article even says things like, "While it’s easy to look at the numbers cited above and conclude that Obama has failed at his mission of bringing the country together, a deeper dig into the numbers in the Gallup poll suggests that the idea of erasing the partisan gap is simply impossible, as political polarization is rising rapidly."

All that without even bringing up names like, I don't know, Abraham Lincoln.

Fvck that headline writer (and their editor).