I, Skewerer

Recently I mentioned a CBS claim that Reagan "was viewed as" a popular president, and contrasted that to a graph in a Gallup article showing Reagan's approval rating while in office was mediocre -- he was 6th out of the last 10 presidents, behind Clinton and just ahead of Nixon.

In the comments, Solomon took issue with this, saying that I'd "skew[ed] the purpose and meaning of that [Gallup] article purposefully and shamelessly." Because I really do strive for accuracy and fairness, I want to respond to his statements.

However, I must warn you that unless you like this kind of thing, it will be incredibly boring.

For reference, the CBS article is here, and the Gallup piece is here.

1. Solomon writes that "The Gallup page you cite clearly states that Reagan was one of the most liked presidents of all time, regardless of job approval ratings."

This is simply not true. Gallup routinely measures both a president's job approval ratings and whether he's liked as a person. And while the article does say, "Reagan was always well-liked by the American public -- based on ratings measuring the public's personal opinion rather than its assessment of his job performance," this is true almost all the time for all presidents. So the divergence in the two measurements of Reagan doesn't mean he was especially "well-liked." And the article rightfully doesn't say he was -- it just points out the divergence.

There's some good information on this subject in this article:

Gallup reported on May 20, 1982, that "contrary to a widely held belief, Reagan’s personal popularity is not disproportionately greater than his predecessors’." At that time, Reagan’s job approval rating was 44 percent, while public approval of his personality was 69 percent. This is a perfectly ordinary disparity. Eisenhower’s personality approval was 84 percent when his job approval was 52 percent; 80 percent of the public liked Johnson personally when only 48 percent approved of his job performance. For Kennedy, comparable figures are 86 percent and 64 percent, for Nixon 78 percent and 55 percent, for Ford 69 percent and 44 percent, and for Jimmy Carter 72 percent and 48 percent.

Similarly:

Even the notion that the American public likes Ronald Reagan the man (as opposed to some of his policies) has been grossly exaggerated. Overall, his "likeability" percentages have ranged in the low-to-mid seventies, reaching a high of 81% in November 1985, and a low of 50% in August 1983. Likeability indexes have generally fluctuated in the mid-to-upper seventies for all of Reagan's modern predecessors.

For example, 84% of Americans liked Ike in February 1956. In August 1964, 89% of Americans liked Johnson. Even in the summer months of Carter's final, unpopular year as president (just before his defeat by Reagan in the 1980 election), Carter scored a higher Gallup personal likeability index at 76% than Reagan's 73% during the comparable period of his Administration.

2. If you read the CBS article, you'll see that when it states that Reagan was "viewed as a popular president," it is explicitly referring to his Gallup approval rating while in office. In fact, it gives a rundown of presidential Gallup approval ratings. In the process it gets it factually wrong (claiming Reagan was 5th and ahead of Clinton) and spins it misleadingly (claiming Reagan comes in 5th out of "all who have held the office" rather than 6th of the 10 for whom there is polling data).

So, I'm not sure why it's misleading to counter CBS' claim about Reagan's Gallup approval ratings while in office with a graph of Reagan's Gallup approval ratings while in office.

3. The Gallup article makes two other main points about Reagan's popularity. One of them does not bolster Solomon's case, but one does.

(A) Reagan comes in near the top both in polls about who the greatest president was in history, and in polls about who the greatest president was since World War II.

This is interesting, but despite what Solomon appears to believe, it's not meaningful in terms of Reagan's overall popularity. You can be beloved by a fraction of Americans without being particularly popular overall. This appears to be the case with Reagan.

For instance, in a 2003 poll, 13% of people chose Reagan as the greatest president in history. Another 11% chose George W. Bush, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush or Nixon. Reagan was probably popular among this 11%. So 24% of respondents total would probably admire him.

Meanwhile, 63% chose Kennedy, Lincoln, FDR, Clinton, Jefferson, Truman or Carter. It's likely Reagan was quite unpopular with that 63%. And it's likely Kennedy, Lincoln, FDR, Clinton, Jefferson and Truman were all popular with that 63%, no matter who their first choice was.

(B) Reagan's present-day, retrospective approval ratings are quite high, significantly higher than when he was in office.

73% of people in a 2002 poll retroactively approved of Reagan's performance while in office, which is much higher than his 53% average at the time. This places him 2nd out of the last 8 presidents, behind only Kennedy.

I can be legitimately criticized for leaving this out. So have at me.

If you're going to do so, though, you may want to ponder why Reagan's approval ratings have risen so much. Could it be because of the relentless flood of false stories -- beginning in 1981 and continuing to the present day -- claiming he was really, really popular while in office?

I would say yes, and would compare it to another phenomenon:

If you polled people now, most would probably say that the more education you had, the more likely you were to oppose the Vietnam war. Certainly -- as with the stories about Reagan's popularity -- there has been a relentless flood of stories like this for the past 30 years: the soft-headed elitists didn't understand what blue collar, salt of the earth Americans knew in their hearts.

However, these stories are completely untrue. In fact, it was exactly the opposite: during the Vietnam war, the more education someone had, the more likely they were to support it. The less education someone had, the more likely they were to oppose it completely.

So that's it. Feel free to disagree with me -- all that will happen is that I will call you a fascist. JUST LIKE THOSE BROWNSHIRTS AT THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS.