MADNESS: Is the American project approaching its end?

MONDAY, JANUARY 20, 2025

Two roads diverged in a wood: In our view, it was an intriguing phone call.

Borrowing language from the early Dylan, the phone call in question came from "somewhere out in the United States." 

More specifically, it came from Alexander from New York (as best we can tell). He said he had just crossed into Pennsylvania on his way to D.C. to attend today's inauguration.

Yesterday morning, the gentleman called C-Span's Washington Journal as his fast car zipped along. We agreed with the first several things he said—with his assessments of the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

We agreed with those assessments. But then he moved on to this:

ALEXANDER FROM NEW YORK (1/19/25): I also want to say that Biden, I heard or I read, is leaving at 38% approval rating, which is the longest—the lowest in totally modern American history—you can fact check me on that. And Trump's policies are actually rather popular...

Briefly, the caller continued from there. To hear his full call, click this.

We were struck by the highlighted statement. To our ear, the caller wasn't completely sure of his number. On that basis, he said that he was open to a fact check.

We were struck by the fact that he welcomed a fact-check. At this site, we had already fact-checked the claim in question. We'd done so several days before. 

At this point, we offer a warning: 

WARNING: What follows will require a bit of time and attention!

Continuing right along:

The caller said he'd heard that President Biden is leaving office with a 38% approval rating. He said he'd heard that that was the lowest such rating in modern American history.

Almost surely, this was a reference to a recent CNN survey—a survey which was widely discussed by the stars of the Fox News Channel. The caller may even have read this news report at the Fox News website—a report which was perfectly accurate:

New polls show Biden leaving office with approval ratings still buried deep in negative territory

A new national poll indicates that President Biden's approval ratings remain well underwater as the nation's 46th president is only days from leaving office.

Just 36% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing in the White House, according to the latest CNN poll conducted by SSRS, with 64% saying they disapprove. The approval rating matches the president's previous low mark in the cable news network's polling during Biden's single term in office.

The poll was released on Wednesday, just hours before the president delivers his primetime farewell address to the nation, with just days left before Biden's term ends and he is succeeded by President-elect Trump in the White House.

[...]

Sixty-one percent of those questioned in the CNN survey said they see Biden’s presidency overall as a failure, with 38% viewing it as a success. 

Was that survey the source of what the caller had heard? If so, President Biden's approval number actually stood at 36 percent—two points lower than the C-Span caller had said!

Full disclosure! The news report didn't say that this was the lowest such number in recent history. That said, we'll guess that such claims were made at some point on the Fox News Channel, where misstatement in service to Storyline is a key "journalistic" norm.

At any rate, the numbers from that CNN survey had been widely discussed. Below, you see the original news report at CNN's website about the results of that poll.

How did President Biden stand as he was about to leave office? On this occasion, the figure filberts at CNN were slicing the lunch meat quite thin:

CNN Poll: Biden leaves office with his approval rating matching the lowest of his term

President Joe Biden will leave office with his approval rating remaining at the lowest level of his term and his favorability rating close to his personal low, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. Americans broadly view Biden’s four years in office more as a failure than as a success, with his administration doing little to turn around persistent negativity about the state of the country generally or about its economy.

Overall, 36% of US adults say they approve of the way Biden handled the presidency, matching his previous low mark in CNN polling during his term...

Biden’s favorability rating, a measure of personal feelings rather than job performance, stands at 33% favorable to 58% unfavorable, just one point off his previous low in CNN polling since he became vice president under Barack Obama in 2009 (he reached that 32% in June 2023). His favorability rating has been mired in the low 30s for much of the past two years.

[...]

Most Americans, 61%, say they see Biden’s presidency overall as a failure, with 38% viewing it as a success. That lags far behind two presidencies largely seen as successful: Bill Clinton’s (68% considered it a success in 2000) and Barack Obama’s (65% rated it a success in early 2017). Biden’s time in office stands above George W. Bush’s, though, which 68% of Americans judged as more of a failure than a success when he left office in 2009.

CNN was slicing it thin! Here's what the survey said:

The president's approval number was 36 percent. By way of contrast, his favorability number was 33 percent. 

That said, a 38 percent figure could also be found in the stew! That was the number of people who said they viewed his presidency as a success. 

So it went with the lunch meat—or perhaps in the stew. The numbers looked like this: 

President Biden's numbers:
Job approval: 36 percent
Viewed favorably: 33 percent
Successful presidency: 38 percent

Those numbers emerged from the CNN poll. That was the shape of the goulash.

In fairness, the C-Span caller had it pretty much right. Also, and stating the obvious, none of those numbers are good. By the norms of post-war American history, those are lousy numbers.

The C-Span caller, a Trump supporter, was pleased by those low assessments of Biden. That said, was one part of his claim simply wrong?

Days earlier, we'd been struck by a peculiar omission from CNN's report. It was on that basis that we'd already conducted the type of fact check the caller said he welcomed. 

Strange! In the passage we've posted, CNN compared Biden's "successful presidency" number with the substantially better numbers recorded by Presidents Clinton and Obama before him. 

CNN also said that President George W. Bush's "failed presidency" number had in fact been seven points worse than President Biden's! At least with respect to that assessment, Biden's score wasn't the worst!

Having said that, how strange! Biden had been compared to Clinton and Obama, but also to the younger President Bush. But something struck us as odd in CNN's report:

One of this nation's recent presidents had been completely unmentioned—President Donald J. Trump! Alone among our most recent presidents, his numbers upon leaving office had somehow failed to appear.

We were struck by that omission, and so we decided to check. What was his approval number when he was leaving office?

We'll guess that C-Span's caller had never heard what we found. Almost surely, he'd never heard it from the array of corporate hacks who star on the Fox News Channel's programs. 

How had President Trump been viewed when he was leaving office? Below, you see Gallup's report from January 2021:

Last Trump Job Approval 34%; Average Is Record-Low 41%

As President Donald Trump prepares to leave the White House, 34% of Americans approve of the job he is doing as president, the worst evaluation of his presidency. His 41% average approval rating throughout his presidency is four points lower than for any of his predecessors in Gallup's polling era. Trump's ratings showed a record 81-percentage-point average gap between Republicans and Democrats—11 points wider than the prior record.

The 34% job approval rating for Trump in Gallup's Jan. 4-15 poll is one point lower than his prior lowest single rating, registered on several occasions in late 2017...

None of this makes a lick of difference. But so the basic facts went. 

The C-Span caller thought Biden's approval number was the lowest in recent history. According to Gallup, Trump's number had been four points lower as he flew off to Mar-a-Lago, refusing to attend the inauguration of the man to whom he refused to admit he had lost.

(We never found a CNN survey from January 2021. Some such material may exist.)

Do the results of our fact-check matter? No, they don't matter at all.

Quite possibly, someone "will be telling this with a sigh / Somewhere ages and ages hence." If so, no one will be listening to what that person is saying. Similarly, few people have been listening to facts or to actual information over the past thirty years. 

Two roads have diverged in a failing nation over the past many years. As a general matter, we the people have taken the road more pleasurably traveled by. 

We've offered you a bunch of facts in this pointless report. As empires die—and every empire eventually does—Storyline is pleasing and fun. Information and facts are hard.

Today, is an empire beginning to end? That would be our broadest guess, though our guess could always be wrong.

We don't see any obvious way to emerge from our failing nation's current cultural / journalistic / intellectual / tribal mess. The problem can be tracked to various groups of imperfect people, including us hapless Blues.

Tomorrow: Why didn't CNN cite Trump? Also, Ezra Klein explains