pan6467

I do agree that people need to let 2000 go because those who focus or are bitter over it shall never move forward and shall never win another election.

HOWEVER, you are very factually WRONG about Clinton. His personal ratings declined BUT his job approval ratings were extremely high. In the '96 election the GOP ran Dole because they knew noone would beat Clinton. His ratings were in the 60's at the time. Do a search EVERY site I went to showed that his ratings EVEN during the 98 scandal were in the 60's.

So, no you may not say Clinton was re-elected with lower than 50% approval ratings.... that's a fallacy and not FACT.

Just an example and it portrays Clinto in a negative light (to appease and so people can't say "liberal biased writings can't count as proof".

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CLINTON'S JOB-APPROVAL RATING HIGH

AP
9/14 Will Lester


Clinton's Job-Approval Rating High

By WILL LESTER Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton's lofty job approval ratings seem far removed from the growing calls for his resignation and the talk in Congress of impeachment.

Indeed, political analysts say they've never seen anything quite like the president's steady run of ratings over 60 percent during eight months of intense controversy over his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Why is this happening?

Some would argue: ``It's the economy, stupid'' -- the oft-quoted slogan from the war room in Clinton's first presidential campaign.

``We could talk all day and night about factors that might change his job approval 2 or 3 percent,'' said political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. ``The economy is the single most important ingredient to his Teflon.''

``The country has prospered under him,'' said Clinton political adviser James Carville, field general from that 1992 war room. ``In democracies, historically, people have blamed their leaders when things go bad and rewarded their leaders when things have gone well.''

The stock market has struggled lately amid international financial problems, but unemployment and inflation rates are the best they've been in a generation and falling interest rates have spurred a boom in housing sales.

On Monday, the president addressed growing international financial troubles and called on the world's wealthy nations to work together on economic issues.

While the president's personal ratings on trust and ethics have declined recently and some people say they want him censured, public approval of his job performance is helping him for now.

The president struggled in the polls during his first two years and Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. During the government shutdown in late 1995, Clinton boosted his approval numbers by successfully blaming Republicans for the gridlock.

``His survival in the presidency and his high popularity are directly attributable to the overreaching of Republicans in the Congress,'' said Alan Brinkley, a history professor at Columbia University. ``Once he had an unpopular enemy against whom he could compare himself, it gave him enormous leverage for improving his image.''

The president's job approval numbers flourished through 1996 and 1997. When news of the Starr investigation of Clinton's relationship with Ms. Lewinsky broke in January, his job approval rating actually spiked to 71 percent in a Pew Research Center poll. It has been in the 60s ever since.

Since the president admitted in August that he had a sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, some newspapers, TV pundits and members of Congress have called for his resignation or impeachment. But the public has not caught impeachment fever.

``This brings him down to the level of the guy next door. Sure the guy has faults,'' said Doris Graber, a political communications expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago. ``But people can identify with lying about this sort of thing, even in their teen years, lying about dating.''

The media's sense of outrage is higher than the public's, Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation suggested, because individual journalists feel a sense of betrayal.

``In spite of everything that people in Washington, D.C., may believe, the sun does not rise and set on Washington,'' Kovach said. ``For most people, Washington and the work of the federal government are a much smaller part of their lives than people tend to believe.''

Clinton's Republican predecessors saw their job approval ratings drop dramatically.

President Reagan lost 20 points in a month and a half in late 1986 when the Iran-Contra affair became public. And President Bush, whose job approval ratings were near 90 percent in early 1991 after the Persian Gulf War, saw them drop to about about 30 percent by the summer of 1992 as the economy sagged.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Monday that job approval is merely ``a measure of the country's sense of well-being.'' He contended that the president's personal poll numbers are a far more important measure of how people view him.

Almost six out of 10 people in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll taken Sunday had a negative view of Clinton.


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Link:http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a660454.htm

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"