ABC's George Stephanopoulos beats dead horse. Again

Written by Eric Boehlert

Published

Breaking news! Obama is more popular than his policies. So says Stephanopoulos. And if this were March or April when I first heard that media meme, the headline might be interesting.

But July-going-on-August? Honestly George, is that your best insight?

I touched on this CW trend recently, yet continue to be amazed by the robotic, and never-ending, embrace of the rather obvious and common observation that a sitting president is more popular than his actual policies. I'm amazed because hasn't that pretty much always been the case for sitting presidents? Or can Stephanopoulos, or any other Beltway talking head who repeats this nonsense incessantly, point to a recent president where the inverse was true: a president whose policies were widely disliked by the public yet maintained a high personal approval rating?

It literally makes no sense.

Presidents being more popular than their specific policies is the norm. During his first term, President Bush was routinely more popular than his policies. As I highlighted:

In May 2003, in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, ABC News found that Bush scored a hefty 71 percent approval rating. However, only 52 percent of Americans approved of the way he handled the economy, and only 43 approved of the way he ran the federal budget. But there was no widespread media buzz about how Americans approved of Bush but were deeply troubled about his policies and that political trouble loomed.

Why? Because it wasn't news or noteworthy. That trend -- that gap -- had been detectable for decades among presidents with robust job approval ratings. Indeed, it's illogical to think that the opposite would be true -- that voters would approve of a president's specific policies more than they'd approve of the way the president was doing the job. With Obama, though, that polling gap suddenly dominates the coverage of his approval numbers.

UPDATED: Don't tell Jamison, but in the Stephanopoulos segment last night, ABC's Charles Gibson also confused Obama's “personal popularity” with his job approval rating.