John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge counter the malaise on the nation’s right in this morning’s Wall Street Journal and their column, together with a roundtable on the radio yesterday, reminded me of another problem with polls on the president’s approval rating.
The
questions are simply approve/disapprove without any understanding of
the reason for disapproval. The president has reportedly lost ground
among those 30-44 on Social Security reform and the commentators saw
that as a sign that his reform proposals were unpopular. The Cato
Institute and others on the right, however, have complained about the
president’s poor job of selling the reform. They likely “disapprove of
the president’s handling of Social Security” because they agree with him on the need for reform and the desirability of personal lockboxes.
Medicare
drug benefits, the war in Iraq, and other issues often have disapproval
from the right and left, but most take it as simply disapproval from
the left and propose more spending for drugs, no reform of social
security, and timelines for withdrawal–positions that guaranteed to
have narrow appeal.
