I HATE OPINION POLLS!
We start with the dunk contest, which has been massively political in the last years because the winner is selected American Idol style, or maybe I'm just bitter that I can't do this. I'm also mad that the G-spot doesn't exist anymore because one twin doesn't know how to have a good time.
My point is that opinion and knowledge polls are spurious and a weak metric for defining anything besides popularity. I hate them. Opinion polls poke my badger.
The first premise I need you to take for granted is that people perform their best when they have something to gain. For professional sports teams, that's revenue; for politicians, it's votes (and sometimes revenue); for me, it's sex, cookies, and back-rubs. In a word, we all work for popularity.
It seems to follow that both politicians and sports teams are incentivized to win. It would also follow that talent leads to victories which in turn leads to popularity. So it should be that the best president would be the most popular one.
But... no, not perfectly. In essence, this poll shows that it isn't about the actual quality of the gentlemen in question, but in fact a question about the loyalties of the poll subjects. The question here is not "Who is the best President?" but "Which president has the most fans?".
I want to examine this data through an interesting lens: Lets compare the political popularity of Presidents Bush and Obama with the popularity of some sports teams. I'll be borrowing heavily from the book Scorecasting, which has been an incredible read and I recommend it.
The Cubs are wildly popular in Chicago, their ticket prices have averaged almost 50 bucks, even in the recession, and their attendance is so good, even at those ticket prices, that Tribune sold 95% of the Cubs, along with Wrigley Field and a share of TV rights for $900 million, in 2009, when the recession meant that 900 million dollars was real money.
The most hated man in Chicago is Steve Bartman. He is the Curse manifested, a human billy-goat that denied the Cubs their first chance at the World Series in 58 year, as surely as if he had stolen the ball straight from a players hands.
The Cubs have a (now 66-year-long) drought in the World Series, but they are wildly popular in Chicago. It seems to violate the logic we espoused above, that success begets popularity which begets paychecks. It seems to follow, but it doesn't happen, and the curse is the explanation.
From Scorecasting, after looking at team stats and comparing them to other teams: "To traffic in the obvious, the reason the cubs haven't won is that they haven't put particularly skilled teams on the field." Now, see the psychological phenomenon called "the self-serving bias." Cubs fans identify so closely with their team that will consistently blame outside factors for their teams loss, instead of seeing those flaws clearly.
Would it help my argument to clarify that the catch Steve Bartman caught wasn't actually a game-winner? The the Cubs were ahead by 3 points in the eighth inning. There were four outs to go. The series (not even the World Series, but the NL championship series) wasn't even tied, it was 3-2 for the Cubs. What Steve Bartman did was steal the 5th to last out of the game that would have been the Cubs second to last chance to move on to the World Series.
What happened the billy-goat-man stealing the championship right from under the noses of the deserving and talented Cubs? The retelling of the story raises the stakes, to make villianizing Mr. Bartman that much easier. The more villianous he is, the less it looks like the truth: the Cubs blew a lead in the last inning, and then lost a second home game to give the Marlins the pennant. Couldn't have been my Cubs, man, it was that damn curse and that idiot Bartman.
But this story has been told. Why is it relevant to the Presidential popularity contest?
This poll shows how much republicans loved G.W. Bush throughout his two terms. Notice the obvious spikes around 9/11 and early 2003 (the beginning of the Iraq war). Then notice that the biggest gains he made were not with republicans, but with democrats and independents (mostly because 99% is tough to build on). The trend is clear. Every move that Bush made up or down with Democrats and independents is reflected, but less so, in the republican line. Except for that one drop, ending in early October 2008. What happened in there? Oh yeah... also... THIS had been going on for months.
Basically, the entire election centered on making G dub look like a douchebag, and he was getting shat on by all sides. What's important here is that his approval ratings actually showed it (10 percent loss among republicans from september 2008 to October 2008) The fans quit forgiving him because they quit identifying with him, because they had someone new to identify with, and man was she SASSY!
Identify... that's an important word. Identity Politics is the buzzword for anyone who wants to discredit Obama's talent, implying that he won because he was black (valid), all the black people voted for him (also valid), and that all the black people voted for him because he was black (invalid). The question is, do democrats stand behind Obama as much as Cubs fans, as much as republicans did with Bush?
I don't think so. It looks like to me that Obama takes the biggest hits within his own party, or at least he's taking even hits on both sides. It's not as clear, but it seems to be true. Then again, Obama has only had two years in office, compared to the 8 I looked with Bush, and Obama hasn't started any wars or had to console America through any terrorist attacks, so the trends are harder to compare.
If Bush dropped ten percentage points among Republicans because of a global recession and an entire election cycle made to cast his as an idiot, Obama dropped 8 percentage points (from July to August 2009) among democrats because apparently he hadn't fixed it yet.
The reason I can't conclusively say that democrats are blindly for or viciously demanding of Obama is because the milestones simply don't match up with Bushes. Bush was infinitely more polarizing as president, except when everyone was with him (see 9/11).
So Obama is more like the the White Sox than the Cubs. The Sox only get attendance and approval like the Cubs do when they're within a season of winning the World Series. Obama has to work for his approval, and pays when it just looks like he won't get his work done. Some people will always root for him, always think he'll come out on top, but most of us need him to prove it. (and some of use refuse to believe a word he says no matter what)
Mostly I think this comes down to the personality of the parties. Democrats are more inclusive, complex, and pragmatic than conservatives, so we identify with each other less, critique each other harder, and consider our differences valid without policing. We are harder on our politicians because we are more afraid of authoritarianism than subversion, less faithful that success is ours to be defended from others instead of won together.
That's what this presidential popularity poll boils down to: how simply can we distill our politics? Picking a single man to represent us best, trying to find his most memorable or popular qualities and relate them to ourselves.
Pick Reagan if you're a tea-partier or a wistful baby-boomer. Pick Obama if you're young, optimistic, or black. Bill Clinton if you're a liberal who hasn't been sold on this new guy yet. Abraham Lincoln if you want to hearken back to history, George Washington if emancipation wasn't that important to you.
Using an opinion poll to establish who the greatest president is resembles deciding the MLB Champion by the same means: it only identifies who the most popular candidates are, and that's a dangerous notion. The Cubs attendance records may not be affected much by success, but their beer prices strongly correlate to ticket sales, according to Scorecasting.
Imagine how popular Obama would be if he took a prime-time TV slot and said these words: "America, I know things aren't great right now, but I'm doing my best for you." Then, any collegiate fight song came on with the Red, White, and Blue girls dancing behind him. "America, go to your front door and open it. You'll find there your favorite beverage and a scoop of ice cream. Now enjoy this Uncle Sam mascot chasing the Dancing Chicken. He's a quick one, that chicken!" Now that would get some approval ratings, and when it didn't fix the economy, we could blame the poor for not having worked hard enough to earn HD tv's to watch it on.
So the question is this: do we want a president who appeases us with cheap beer, knowing we'll keep voting and sucking up the losses, not blaming him but the circumstances?
-with thanks to Tom, for showing me the original article.
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