Obama More Unpopular than Bush

A reader suggests that people should know about this, given the (liberal) narrative that Bush was a very bad, and very unpopular, president:

Gallup not only offers weekly averages of the current president’s job-approval ratings (“Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as president?”), but also offers a number of historical comparisons.  Here are a few that I think are especially of interest:

Obama currently (March 19th–25th): 46%

“Term average to date” (January 2009–present): 49%

bin Laden Dead

You’ll have heard by now that our guys killed Osama bin Laden yesterday.  Apparently we were able to locate him because of intelligence obtained from detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which some suggest would not have been possible without waterboarding. 

Quick Thought: Double Standard?

President Obama finally gave a speech last night about his military action in Libya—what, ten days after American military operations started?  If I remember correctly, we had to have the national debate about whether to begin the second Iraq War (which, unlike this, was arguably just a continuation and finishing of the first one) for at least the better part of a year, and liberals still decried the “rush” to war.  I hope liberals will judge President Obama by the same standard.

Update (March 29th, 2011): Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online notes,

There was no mention of the Congress. Is he going to ever ask its approval? And if not, why the repeated emphasis on asking others such as the Arab League or the UN for their approval — given that their representatives, unlike ours, are largely not elected?

Yes, come to think of it, President Bush also had Congress’s authorization for the use of force.