Opinion: What do Obama and Reagan have in common?
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Despite President Obama’s low approval ratings, which are at 45%, he is still the most admired man in America for the third year in a row, according to a recent USA Today-Gallup poll. How can that be? Our columnist Doyle McManus weighed in Tuesday morning on KPCC’s ‘AirTalk.’
‘I think we need to disentangle these numbers a little bit because they’re measuring different things and they’re asking different questions,’ he said. ‘It’s not a number that tells you an awful lot about the politics of the moment.’
What the number does reveal is that Obama has a hardcore fan base. So why, then, does he have a fairly low job rating?
‘That’s mostly, we think, because there’s a terrible recession on and he hasn’t fixed it,’ McManus said. ‘The same thing happened to Ronald Reagan in his first term when he had a terrible recession [yet was still] someone Americans admired.’
As for the women, Hillary Rodham Clinton is the most admired of 2010, but trailing her closely is Sarah Palin. Here’s the podcast for further analysis.
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-- Alexandra Le Tellier
