Gallup
Dartmouth welcomed the Gallup Poll's editor-in-chief, Frank Newport, to campus yesterday for the closing lecture in our "Leading Voices in Politics and Policy" series. His assessment of President Obama's re-election chances was negative:
Ten presidents have run for re-election since we’ve had modern polling, since Harry Truman. Seven of them have been successful, and three have been defeated. … in August before his election year his current 38 percent job approval rating is lower than any other president who was successfully re-elected. So history would say he’s in big trouble.
There has been a rash of commentary in recent weeks about what the Obama Administration could have done better. (Pick up one thread here and follow it back.) At a very general level, I think President Obama's biggest problem is that he wants to be the president who transcends politics. The president who wants to transcend politics will be a patsy for a Congress that doesn't.
In my Roll Call column this week, I take another shot at the Gallup poll on waste from about 10 days ago and on Steve Moore's characterization of that poll. Thanks. for listening. I feel much better now.
Waste Not, Want Not — but First Define Waste and Want
Sept. 29, 2009
Gallup released a poll two weeks ago that unwittingly but perfectly explains the ever-intractable politics of the federal budget. The poll, which was released Sept. 15, found that the average American believes that 50 cents of every tax dollar collected by the federal government is wasted.
Steve Moore wrote a column published by the Wall Street Journal yesterday that tried very hard to use the results of a recent Gallup poll to convince everyone a massive taxpayer revolt is close at hand. There are two problems: He's misreading the poll and he's doesn't understand its implications.
Bruce fowarded to me a remarkable poll from Gallup. He suggested that I, rather than he, was the right person to comment. I am happy to oblige one of my bloggers-in-crime.
The poll shows that, on average, Americans today believe that 50 cents of every federal tax dollar is wasted. Gallup makes a big deal of the fact that this is an increase from 46 cents per dollar in 2001.
There's one problem: the poll never defines "waste."
Is it:
