He still have the problem of being quite closely linked with the worst of the bad actors being exposed on Wall Street and Health Care Reform has to work. Goldman Sachs and Paulson lead eventually back to Chicago Hedge Funds that invented the scam, which are very closely linked to Obama's local friends.

@ Gopher- I was going to bring that up actually. I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but things seemed to point to Russia being involved in the death.

Here's a funny fact. I went to the site that Invictus referenced and it turned out to be a FOX news site. So, I went to Gallup and looked up the information myself. You can see the polls for presidents in April of their second year (first term presidents only) and guess what? Fox lied! I know. Shocker. The real results are:

Kennedy 77%
Bush (GW) 76%
Senior Bush and Eisenhower 68%
Nixon 57%
Clinton 50%
Obama 48%
Reagan 44%
Carter 43%

Look for yourself. http://www.gallup.com/poll/politics.aspx

The poll he posted was from December '09.

Ah. You are correct. But the actual numbers from Gallup were 50% instead of the 47% listed at that time. I doubt the accuracy of the rest of the article.

The April of Obama's second year would be 2011. On your link Obama isn't mentioned since that time is in the future.

Fox didn't lie. The relevant time for your list hasn't occurred yet.

Here are my previous links.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/gallup-daily-obama-job-approval.aspx
http://therobalution.com/2009/12/08/gallup-obama-lowest-rated-1st-year-president-in-history/

Yes, SirBayer, we surely are the most liberal website on the planet. Glad he noticed that.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/Presidential-Approval-Center.aspx

Compare any president you like. You just can't read the chart, Invictus. And yes, this is April of his second year. It is not in the future. This is now.

The first link you give is also given in the link I gave, with historical comparisons. The second link you have ends the article with the following. "For more, check out the FoxNews article HERE"

Truman, Ford and Carter all had lower approval ratings.
2009 was Obama's first year, 2010 is Obama's second.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/Presidential-Job-Approval-Center.aspx

You can click on two presidents and see the way the graphs correspond.

Oh, and the savior and messiah of the Republican party, old Ronnie himself had lower approval rating at this time. Reagan was at 43% at this time, whereas Obama is hovering around 48%.

You can actually compare 4. Plus, if you drag the slider down, you will see that Regan was lower also.

I love graphs, don't you Tantris?

Looks like Eiesenhower had the highest sustained popularity of any president in the last seventy years, yet he is rarely considered a great president. What does that mean?

er... Eisenhower.

WWII veteran will always get you a certain amount of respect. It looks like he also supported a lot of the civil-rights movements. His wiki page says that he was later criticized for being a do-nothing president, but I think I would view that as a good thing. There's no need to pass laws just for the sake of 'doing something'

Love how quick the knee jerk party lines came into play in this thread.

I'm still wondering if the victor of the approval ratings showdown will claim victory for the whole thread. You guys seem to be investing an awful lot of time in it. Let's not base our approval or disapproval of a president based on his approval ratings. That's gotta be a fallacy of some sort. =P

"That's gotta be a fallacy of some sort. =P"
circular reasoning?

It actually seems like the presidents who push for more change, have lower approval ratings. I think someone could argue that they are the ones who are considered the best and the worst...since, change is dangerous. The best to some, the worst to others.

@terry32smith - you said:

"Bush ruined this country. By far the worst president in U.S. history. Economic ruin! Education system ruined."

lol, you make me laugh. I doubt you have done all that much reading on past presidents, nor do you fully understand the implications of your comments. The current economic situation can not be attributed to a specific decision, person, political party or presidential administration.

Also, if you want to know what it truly means to be hated, get a time machine and ask Harding, Buchanan or Pierce. 25 years from now, Bush won't seem so bad, but those guys will be regarded as terrible forever.

I don't really think of any of those presidents at all. I feel like Nixon was truly horrible. He did horrible things. Committed crimes. The people in the Bush administration came from his and learned from their mistakes during Nixon's presidency. They didn't keep records and just declared they were allowed rather than hiding.

Obama has the lowest approval rating on Tuesday's when its raining, and on alternate Saturday's during September.

"Perhaps 'historic' lows was a little excessive"

No, it wasn't excessive. Its was wrong. Big difference.

Just out of curiosity, had anyone in Poland complained about Obama playing golf? Or was it just Fox? Did this story make the media there?

"Let's not base our approval or disapproval of a president based on his approval ratings. "

So what you appear to be suggesting is that we should NOT have a direct democracy, but a representative one (which I agree with). This will allow a president and Congress to do things that aren't necessarily popular, but is 'good' for the country. So that the Iraq War (unpopular for Bush towards the end of his presidency) and Healthcare (unpopular for Obama now) lead to low ratings, but might be necessary. (I am not in favor of changing this thread to debate whether they are necessary - merely pointing out that popularity for a president and 'goodness' of a president aren't synonyms.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/127316/Obama-Weekly-Approval-Lowest-Yet-One-Point.aspx

It's funny, during Bush's presidency it was a lot easier (in my experience) to find someone with whom to have an intelligent conversation based on him and him alone - now it's impossible to find someone who likes Obama who won't compare him to Bush whenever you point out a mistake or someone who doesn't like him who won't compare him to Reagan.

Can we stop the "my president can beat up your president" b.s. and just talk about the man if we're going to talk about him, good or bad?

@SteevoKun:
Why did you post that?

Obama is doing a very good job trying to unite the country and work across party lines. It is really annoying me, and not working at all since the Republicans don't want it to. I would rather he said, "ok, fine, you don't want to play, then we will do it my way", and just forced through good policies.

In international affairs, Obama has been doing a great job. There are very few ways to attack him, so it gets to be about how he greeted someone, or petty little stuff. I don't think any other countries care about that stuff as much as find it just humorous. He has patched up our reputation and our standing in the world, which is pretty amazing.

I wish he would move further and faster in removing the policies of the previous administration.

During Bush's presidency, for the first four years I had people attacking Clinton everytime something came up about Bush. That is the way it is. Honestly, all the way up to today, I still hear people attacking Clinton to defend Bush. Especially the right wing propaganda machine...talk radio, fox news and such.

@Tantris - the President is just a figurehead and can't "push through" anything. If Congress won't back it, the President can't do it. He can't just make up a law or a policy and sign it. Congress has to first pass it and they have to think of their constituents and their political careers. They aren't going to back something if it means they will be voted out for certain no matter how much he may beg, threaten, or cajole them.