Rock Bottom

"Bush Approval Hits New Low," reports ABC News. Their most recent poll finds that 60 percent of the country disapproves George W. Bush's handling of the job of president, and only 39 percent approves.

This follows a CBS News poll earlier this week that found only 33 percent of the country holds a favorable view of President Bush and only 19 percent a favorable view of Vice President Dick Cheney.

How low can they go? Two of my favorite bloggers offer theories.

The Editors, at The Poor Man, offer the BTKWB threshhold. This is a theoretical level of disapproval based on a poll taken after what The Editors suggests would be an extremely unpopular action by the president:

BTKWB (the President’s approval ratings the morning after he pre-empted Monday Night Football in order to Bind, Torture and Kill Wilford Brimley for his own sexual gratification) has generally been taken to be somewhere in the 32-36 percent range, depending on the theoretical models used, and depending on if he uses up the MNF timespot completely, or just pops in during halftime.

It is generally assumed that between 68-64 percent of the general public would disapprove of Wilford Brimley being sadistically murdered on national TV while the President of the United States leered and drooled in a blood-drenched homoerotic fugue that they would be willing to undermine the troops in the field by saying so, and would continue in their disapproval even in the face of such arguments as “the President needs a way to unwind from the pressures of his job”, “there was no other way to be sure he wasn’t a terrorist”, “many terrorists have mustaches, you know”, and even “he might have been hiding Saddam’s WMD in his Quaker Oats."

John Rogers, of Kung fu monkey, takes a less hypothetical approach. He believes that the absolute bottom threshhold for a Republican politician can be measured precisely, and offers an exact figure for this azimuth, which he calls the "Crazification Factor. Rock bottom, Rogers suggests, is 27 percent:

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37 percent approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is —

Tyrone: 27 percent.

John: … you said that immmediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27 percent of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5 percent of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27 percent Crazification Factor in any population.

John: Objectively crazy or crazy vis-a-vis my own inertial reference frame for rational behavior? I mean, are you creating the Theory of Special Crazification or General Crazification?

Tyrone: Hadn't thought about it. Let's split the difference. Half just have worldviews which lead them to disagree with what you consider rationality even though they arrive at their positions through rational means, and the other half are the core of the Crazification — either genuinely crazy; or so woefully misinformed about how the world works, the bases for their decision making is so flawed they may as well be crazy.

John: You realize this leads to there being over 30 million crazy people in the US?

Tyrone: Does that seem wrong?

John: … a bit low, actually.

Note that CBS figure for Dick Cheney again: 19 percent. He's polling a third below Alan Keyes.