{"id":11340,"date":"2007-07-04T17:00:59","date_gmt":"2007-07-04T21:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11340.html"},"modified":"2007-07-04T17:00:59","modified_gmt":"2007-07-04T21:00:59","slug":"presidential-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/presidential-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidential favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rasmussen Reports conducted a poll<\/a> gauging Americans’ attitudes towards every U.S. president in history. There weren’t too many surprises.<\/p>\n

Six American Presidents are viewed favorably by at least 80% of all Americans. Those esteemed six are led by the first President George Washington. The Father of our Country is viewed favorably by 94% of Americans. The sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln, is the second most popular. The man who gave us the Gettysburg Address is viewed favorably by 92%.<\/p>\n

The next four are Thomas Jefferson (89%), Teddy Roosevelt (84%), Franklin D. Roosevelt (81%), and John F. Kennedy (80%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And who fared the worst? No big surprises there, either.<\/p>\n

The highest unfavorable rating for any President is earned by Richard Nixon. Sixty percent (60%) of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the only President to resign from office. Thirty-two percent (32%) have a favorable opinion of the man who famously went to China.<\/p>\n

Close on Nixon’s heels for most unpopular is the current President, George W. Bush. Fifty-nine percent (59%) have an unfavorable opinion of him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s probably worth clarifying that the favorable\/unfavorable rating was a combined score<\/a> — Rasmussen gave respondents a choice between “very favorable, “somewhat favorable,” “somewhat unfavorable,” and “very unfavorable.” Nixon’s “very unfavorable” was 25%. George W. Bush’s was 40%.<\/p>\n

I had two random questions, though. First, the only president who came close to George W. Bush for “very unfavorable” was William McKinley, who also got a 40%. Was this some kind of printing error? Does McKinley really have that many critics?<\/p>\n

And second, who are the 6% of Americans who are reluctant to give George Washington the thumbs up? Is there some kind of anti-Washington contingent out there that’s gone largely unnoticed?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rasmussen Reports conducted a poll gauging Americans’ attitudes towards every U.S. president in history. There weren’t too many surprises. Six American Presidents are viewed favorably by at least 80% of all Americans. Those esteemed six are led by the first President George Washington. The Father of our Country is viewed favorably by 94% of Americans. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11340\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}