President Obama’s middling job approval rating has been quite steady over the last few months, devoid of much movement outside of the relatively subtle shifts seen from poll to poll. This is nothing new: Based on Gallup’s polling, Barack Obama’s approval rating has the smallest standard deviation of any modern […] Read more »
Donald Trump Is…
Donald Trump a populist? Wrong. Trump has nothing to do with Andrew Jackson or Huey Long. He has everything to do with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the modern Republican Party. Trump is a Mixmaster blend of the right-wing Republican politics of the past 50 years. CONT. Sean Wilentz (Princeton), […] Read more »
New research shows just how much presidents try to manipulate public opinion
The political scientists James Druckman and Lawrence Jacobs have just published a book, “Who Governs? Presidents, Public Opinion, and Manipulation.” Early reviews call it “a breakthrough” and “a fascinating study” whose “picture is not pretty.” I talked with Druckman and Jacobs about the book via e-mail. An edited version of […] Read more »
The Appeal of ‘Trump-ism’
Is the “silent majority” ready to roar again? Donald Trump thinks so. At his big rally in Phoenix recently, the bombastic businessman insisted: “The ‘silent majority’ is back, and we are going to take the country back.” Trump’s future in the GOP presidential race is uncertain after his churlish attacks […] Read more »
The Supreme Court and the Politics of Fear
When he ran for president the second time almost half a century ago, Richard M. Nixon made Earl Warren’s Supreme Court a target of his campaign. It was a brilliant move. … I thought of Nixon last week as I watched the parade of Republican would-be presidents outdoing one another […] Read more »
Hillary Clinton May Not Need a Second Chance to Make a First Impression
… Not since Richard M. Nixon mounted a comeback in 1968, historians and pollsters say, has a candidate entered a presidential contest with so low a bar for name recognition or so high a bar for changing voters’ opinions. CONT. Amy Chozick, New York Times Recent polls: Hillary Clinton Read more »