Say Anything Blog

No kidding.

Gallup has just released a poll of the most admired (living) world figures. George W. Bush is the most admired, named so by 13 percent of respondents. (In December 2001, that number was 39 percent.) Bush is followed by Bill Clinton, at five percent, and Jimmy Carter, at four percent. And then, the first non-president on the list is…Barack Obama, with three percent, tied with the Rev. Billy Graham. After that come Colin Powell and Pope Benedict XVI, with two percent, and then a bunch of people, including Nelson Mandela, George H.W. Bush (why is this ex-president rated so low?), Bill Gates, John McCain, George Clooney, Rudolph Giuliani, Al Gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Jackson and, well, Mel Gibson — all at one percent. Bono and John Edwards failed to crack the one percent mark.

Granted the President’s ranking in this poll has dropped since 12/01, it’s worth noting that his rating at that point was undoubtedly inflated by his response to 9/11.  So Bush still tops this poll, even as his overall approval numbers are rock-bottom low.

What does this mean?  I don’t really like drawing conclusions from polls, but if anything I believe it means that most Americans base their opinions about the President on the hostile perception they get from the nation’s journalists - who are all but the President’s political enemies - rather than on any real analysis of his job performance.  Which is why American opinions of the President so often seem muddled and inconsistent.  On one hand, I think most Americans are glad to have a President who has (in the past at least) cut through a lot of the political garbage when it comes to national security and foreign policy and approve of the job he’s doing in those areas.  On the other hand, I also think most Americans get the vague idea from the that the President is Satan and the second-coming of Richard Nixon all wrapped into one.

So they’re confused, and the various political opinion polls tend to show that.

Update: Here’s another indication of the public’s confusion about Bush.  In an AP poll asking respondents to name the heroes and the villains of 2006 President Bush topped the villains list.  And the heroes list.

Of course, the AP took the opportunity to run this headline over the article about the poll:

Wouldn’t a headline reading “Americans Mixed On Bush” have been more accurate?  Of course it would have, but these journalists don’t like Bush so naturally they accentuate the negative.

Which sort of gives you an insight in to why Americans are so mixed on Bush to begin with.