Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Presidential approval ratings since Truman

I love this chart published in the Wall Street Journal for the perspective that it gives of presidential approval ratings over the decades.

The blog Villainous Company has posted at least a couple interesting entries on these graphs: here and here.

VC is politically slanted to the right, so it does its best to put a positive or inevitable spin on Bush II's bad ratings and to not give Clinton credit for a rating that was higher when he left office than when he started which was a singular achievement. Still, I like what he/they did in the second entry, setting wartime presidents apart from peacetime presidents. Apparently we prefer peace.