Another national poll, this time from Pew. I watch nationwide polls from Gallup (they appear daily) and statewide polls, as those portend the critical elections for the President and for Governors and Senators in the appropriate years. Other pollsters might be interesting more for data that the pollsters offer. That's how this poll from Pew Research Center works. It's less flattering than recent Gallup polls (about 63% as opposed to 60%), but that is less important than the wealth of data subdividing attitudes toward the President.
This graphic explains much:
![[Image: 1_1.png]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/08/29085916/1_1.png)
(my comment)
Most approval polls ask about overall view of the President or some other relevant politician or groups thereof. This one subdivides polling into questions of issues and conduct. Not surprisingly, President Trump has few issues that resonate with any but a few Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents (about 6%), but he is OK with about 69% of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. Of course in this highly-polarized society, 69% satisfaction as "many but not all, or almost all" is weak.
Its with conduct that things go really bad for this President. Conduct can be the difference between integrity and corruption, a sane foreign policy and disaster, and between effective responses to disasters (storms, floods, earthquakes, forest fires) and worse-than-expected calamity. It is the difference between acting in accordance with precedent and protocol on matters of law and fostering legal anarchy. It is the difference between effective responses to clear and present danger or making things worse than they might otherwise be. It is also the difference between soothing the public ans offending mass sensibilities.
An agenda can be reduced as a President and Congressional majorities change from one Party to another. Such has sorted itself out in the past, and will do so again. What such changes cannot do is to undo the ugliest deeds of history. No matter what we do we cannot undo the Slave Trade, the Trail of Tears, or the Holocaust. I have my fear that this President can do something that leads the grandson of the Eternal President of the Tyrannical Empire of Korea to turn some vibrant city into a mass of cinders and broken building material. Much can be done to prevent that now, like the President kissing up to China at every possible opportunity. But if the President does something incompetent we will find no way of undoing mass death in a Japanese or South Korean city.
Today I believe that most Republicans would be extremely happy with a President who has a right-wing agenda (abortion ban, outlawing same-sex marriage, tax shifts from income to consumption, evisceration of unions, regulatory relief, undoing Obamacare) who conducts himself much like Obama. Considering how dangerous the capricious conduct of President Trump has been so far, I would prefer such over someone with a liberal agenda and Trump-like behavior. Personal freedom and national survival matter far more than the economic, cultural, and social agenda of the day. The first two do not return easily. The others? That's why we have elections.
At this point my prediction of Donald Trump as a catastrophic failure stands. His behavior confirms and even intensifies my initial fear of him as President.
The next effective, conservative President of the United States of America will act much more like Barack Obama than like Donald Trump.
......
Among Republicans, this chart shows that Republicans are getting queasy about a President who shows little respect for established wisdom within their own Party:
![[Image: 1_2.png]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/08/29085917/1_2.png)
(again my comment):
I would go further: I would suggest that he look to conservative Republicans of the past, like Ronald Reagan. President Reagan would have never delivered that offensive, mealy-mouthed statement about the moral equivalence between the fascistic Right and those opposed. Truth be told, conservatives hate fascists unless the conservatives are sell-outs or fools.
But I remember the Trump campaign. This fellow praised dictators and not the usual heroes of American conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Note that when Margaret Thatcher took swipes at the Argentine occupation of the Falkland Islands she lambasted the Argentine dictatorship as a fascist regime. And it was the arch-conservative, traditionalist and even reactionary Sir Winston Churchill who recognized Adolf Hitler for the demon that he was and had the intellectual integrity to leave no ambiguity of the rectitude of his cause.
If I didn't mention Eisenhower -- you know from my posting record how similar I see the two in behavior and temperament. If the next Republican President does not appear until after the current Crisis, then I expect the taste to be for a sixty-something, mature Reactive. Except for going from age 45 to age 55. Obama fit that pattern well.
...now for some man-on-the-street (strictly speaking, respondent on the phone) expressions. I can't make these up.
![[Image: 3_3.png]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/08/29085935/3_3.png)
On his agenda:
![[Image: 3_5.png]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2017/08/29085937/3_5.png)
This graphic explains much:
(my comment)
Most approval polls ask about overall view of the President or some other relevant politician or groups thereof. This one subdivides polling into questions of issues and conduct. Not surprisingly, President Trump has few issues that resonate with any but a few Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents (about 6%), but he is OK with about 69% of Republicans or Republican-leaning independents. Of course in this highly-polarized society, 69% satisfaction as "many but not all, or almost all" is weak.
Its with conduct that things go really bad for this President. Conduct can be the difference between integrity and corruption, a sane foreign policy and disaster, and between effective responses to disasters (storms, floods, earthquakes, forest fires) and worse-than-expected calamity. It is the difference between acting in accordance with precedent and protocol on matters of law and fostering legal anarchy. It is the difference between effective responses to clear and present danger or making things worse than they might otherwise be. It is also the difference between soothing the public ans offending mass sensibilities.
An agenda can be reduced as a President and Congressional majorities change from one Party to another. Such has sorted itself out in the past, and will do so again. What such changes cannot do is to undo the ugliest deeds of history. No matter what we do we cannot undo the Slave Trade, the Trail of Tears, or the Holocaust. I have my fear that this President can do something that leads the grandson of the Eternal President of the Tyrannical Empire of Korea to turn some vibrant city into a mass of cinders and broken building material. Much can be done to prevent that now, like the President kissing up to China at every possible opportunity. But if the President does something incompetent we will find no way of undoing mass death in a Japanese or South Korean city.
Today I believe that most Republicans would be extremely happy with a President who has a right-wing agenda (abortion ban, outlawing same-sex marriage, tax shifts from income to consumption, evisceration of unions, regulatory relief, undoing Obamacare) who conducts himself much like Obama. Considering how dangerous the capricious conduct of President Trump has been so far, I would prefer such over someone with a liberal agenda and Trump-like behavior. Personal freedom and national survival matter far more than the economic, cultural, and social agenda of the day. The first two do not return easily. The others? That's why we have elections.
At this point my prediction of Donald Trump as a catastrophic failure stands. His behavior confirms and even intensifies my initial fear of him as President.
The next effective, conservative President of the United States of America will act much more like Barack Obama than like Donald Trump.
......
Among Republicans, this chart shows that Republicans are getting queasy about a President who shows little respect for established wisdom within their own Party:
(again my comment):
I would go further: I would suggest that he look to conservative Republicans of the past, like Ronald Reagan. President Reagan would have never delivered that offensive, mealy-mouthed statement about the moral equivalence between the fascistic Right and those opposed. Truth be told, conservatives hate fascists unless the conservatives are sell-outs or fools.
But I remember the Trump campaign. This fellow praised dictators and not the usual heroes of American conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Note that when Margaret Thatcher took swipes at the Argentine occupation of the Falkland Islands she lambasted the Argentine dictatorship as a fascist regime. And it was the arch-conservative, traditionalist and even reactionary Sir Winston Churchill who recognized Adolf Hitler for the demon that he was and had the intellectual integrity to leave no ambiguity of the rectitude of his cause.
If I didn't mention Eisenhower -- you know from my posting record how similar I see the two in behavior and temperament. If the next Republican President does not appear until after the current Crisis, then I expect the taste to be for a sixty-something, mature Reactive. Except for going from age 45 to age 55. Obama fit that pattern well.
...now for some man-on-the-street (strictly speaking, respondent on the phone) expressions. I can't make these up.
On his agenda:
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.