Politico editor and Cheney PR man Mike Allen was on Morning Joe this morning -- probably because they couldn't book Drudge or Cheney, so they settled for the next best thing. BAM!
Anyway, as you can probably guess, Allen said something ridiculous. He said that healthcare reform is currently as unpopular as Bush was at the end. No-one on the panel challenged him, of course, so I looked it up.
According to Gallup, Bush's approval rating at the end was 34 percent.
According to Gallup, support for healthcare reform is currently at 49 percent (with leaners). It's not huge support, but the support/oppose ratio is pretty much even. Bush's approval was terrible, and his disapproval was at 61 percent. Hardly even.
What the blinking hell is Mike Allen talking about? There's a competition in the DC establishment press to come up with clever little comparative zingers like this. Mike Allen is clearly cheating.
UPDATE: Scarborough corrected my post via Twitter. Apparently Allen was talking about President Obama's job approval on healthcare, which is at 35 percent according to the new Quinnipiac poll. Nevertheless, it's still misleading to compare a single issue poll with another president's overall job approval -- especially when that single issue has been a contentious and messy as it's been. Suggesting that President Obama hasn't handled healthcare with ease and perfection can't seriously be correlated with a previous president's entire mishandling of the country.
UPDATE 2: At a glance, Bush's approval rating on terrorism in his final year, for example, was in the range of 45-47 percent. President Obama's current approval rating on terrorism is currently at 49 percent. That's a more accurate comparison. It can also be said that this was Bush's best single-issue approval number at the end.