PRES. OBAMA VS. ST. RONNIE

(h/t John Amato at Crooks & Liars)

Andrew Kohut has a guest column in the NYT and reminds us that Pres. Obama is doing better on the polls than Reagan did given a similar unemployment rate:

So far, concern over Mr. Obama’s policies has not translated into a loss of public support; nor did it for Ronald Reagan through much of 1981. But the public’s patience with Reagan was relatively short lived. By November, when the jobless rate had risen to 8.3 percent, from 7.5 percent in January, a plurality of the public believed that Reaganomics would hurt, not help, their family finances. So began Ronald Reagan’s approval ratings slide. By December, according to Gallup, 49 percent approved of his job performance while 41 percent disapproved. With the economy faltering, his approval rating fell to 42 percent by July 1982, with 46 percent disapproving. His rating hit a low of 35 percent early the next year.

Kohut supplies a nice graph of the interaction between the unemployment rate and St. Ronnie's approval rate: