For those of you who don’t regularly visit George W. Bush’s campaign website and official weblog and Meet-Up site, you may not have known that for the past several days, the site’s front page has been overtaken by the gargantuan, one-thousand-pixels wide layout sampled above. (Constructive note to the G.O.P. web team: It’s doubtful that the majority of Republican Middle American visitors to your website have screen resolutions greater than 800×600. Just a tip for any future pandering ideas you may have.)
In case you’d forgotten, President Bush has claimed over and over again to have modeled his presidency on Reagan’s, and many articles made available this week have reified this point nicely, if not a bit sardonically. You know, tax cuts, deficit spending, reduction of benefits and social services, increased arms spending, etc. Oh, and patriotism. That last thing comes in handy when you consider the 24/7 orgy of Reagan-worship television viewers have been subjected to since news of his death on Saturday. Notably, many commentators have gone so far as to iterate the idea that Ronald Reagan was the most beloved and popular president of modern times.
In that vein, then, here’s some additional information on The Deity That Was Reagan:
“As measured by Gallup polls, Reagan on average had a 53 … Reagan’s highest job approval rating was 65 percent…His average approval rating was 48 percent in 1987 and 53 percent in 1988, though, like most presidents, he got a final lift in his last month of office, getting a 63 percent approval rating in December 1988.”
Here, as well, is some additional information on The Shame That Was Clinton:
“The president leaves office with 61% of the public approving of the way he is handling the job, combined with a surprisingly lofty 64% favorability rating (up from 48% in May 2000)…”
On that note, John Kerry’s official campaign website is expected to soon post the following splashpage:
