Funny polling

"Funny" of course means suspicious here. The WaPo begins by asserting that President Obama's approval rating is seriously down "Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low." The very first question asks for approval/disapproval and the "net" number is 50. Which is about where it's been since December of last year. Sure, confidence (Question 7) was 49 in August of last year and has declined to 43 now. In neither case are we looking at abrupt or massive changes.

I was accused of using a blog post that provided me with an "incorrect reading" and that led me to "publish falsehoods." Not so sure it does either. I quoted Question 26. The WaPo combines that with the previous question to arrive at a combined answer. I strongly disagree with them combining the two questions because they're very different questions. Question 25 asks whether the US should rely on the private sector or the government to pull the economy out of the ditch it's in. Question 26 asks if the US should spend lots of money regardless of whether or not it increases the deficit. Natcherly I agree with the 80% of the public who in Question 26 say "Yeah, go ahead and spend whatever" as the deficit is a vague, abstract concept that hasn't mean much of anything under Republican Presidents since Reagan, but which was regarded as tremendously significant under Carter, and then again under Clinton and then Obama. In any event, it really shouldn't mean a whole lot when we're trying to pull ourselves out of the kind of economic situation we're in.

Nah, this doesn't strike me as a poll designed to get objective measurements on public attitudes.