Too Much Negativity

This blog has had too much negativity targeted at President Obama lately and I haven't done much about it. It's turning into one of those town hall meetings that are being hijacked by radical right-wing conservatives who are afraid of a black president.

So let's set the record strait. I figured I'd look up President Obama's approval ratings to see how America really feels about their president. We can't rely on the radical and vocal fringe to paint a proper picture.

When President Obama was elected, his job approval rating was at about 61 percent. It has steadily dropped over the past several months to just below 50 percent. So what does that mean? Why not look at former President Bush's approval rating.

When President Bush was first elected, his approval rating was right around 55 percent, less popular than President Obama was. President Bush then spiked all the way up to 90 percent after 9/11. That is super high but then again, the whole 9/11 thing was out of the ordinary.

President Bush's rating then slowly dropped over his first term, with peaks for the start of the Iraq war and Saddam's capture, as you would expect. At the time of his reelection, he was again back down to just below 50 percent (and amazingly still managed to get reelected).

His approval rating barely went up from there, dropping at the end of his term all the way down to below 30 percent.

So comparatively speaking, President Obama is not doing all that bad, in fact I think his average in his first year in office is the same or better than President Bush's first-year average. Obama's first year average is far better than Bush's second year average.

This lunatic fringe thing, though, is getting out of hand. It's a perfect example of an all too vocal minority. They are complaining that the country is going down the drain, that it's becoming socialist and violating the Constitution.

The Constitution was written more than 200 years ago. It was intentionally vague and designed to be interpreted by a changing society through time. That's why it has lasted us longer than any other government's constitution thus far.

American society has changed a lot in the last 200 years. I think it's time for the radical right-wing to recognize this and start living in the present.