I'll get to this bullcrap in more detail in just a second, but first, some background. I will admit that I mindlessly check the CNN.com home page a few times a day. It's no New York Times (to be charitable), but the New York Times instituted a 10 article per month viewing limit and I try not to break it too badly. Further, I'll admit that part of the attraction of CNN.com is watching the cars crash into each other (kind of like when the shit hits the fan and they routinely jump the gun reporting the news - did you hear the Supreme Court completely overruled health care reform last summer?).
And besides, where else can you find amazing graphics such as what I've copied below?
- The colors are too close to each other in hue, and do not organize in any reasonable fashion: bright red for a near-certainty of default and... pastel orange for a relatively low possibility of default? Presumably these colors should be on a spectrum of some kind, since the variable they're describing is interval in nature.
- The legend, holy smokes, the legend. This legend looks like it was designed by a mentally challenged third grader on bring your child to work day, or, at the very least, someone who's never seen a chart before.
- In order to interpret this chart, I need to look at the nation I am interested in (luckily I'm good at geography!), try to decipher the color, and then move my eyes over to the Legend That Will Burn Your Eyeballs in order to determine... Ireland has a 51% probability of default?
- But what does that mean, exactly? Why should I care, and how does this relate to the rest of Europe, a/k/a that amorphous grey blob in between Ireland and the rest of Southern Europe?
Since it's such breaking news that most of us still like Obama, let's look at the article in more detail and try to figure out why the hell this is BREAKING NEWS.
President Barack Obama's personal popularity may be one reason he came out of what was arguably the worst week of his presidency with his approval rating holding steady, according to a new national poll.
Oh, I see. CNN sponsored a research survey, and in order to maximize page views, they disguised the one potentially interesting finding in a press release labeled "BREAKING NEWS". Because that doesn't spoil actual breaking news, like, I don't know...
The other breaking news story: THAT GIANT TORNADO THAT IS HEADING RIGHT FOR A MAJOR AMERICAN CITY.
God, CNN is just awful. People are about to die in a massive natural disaster in Oklahoma City, and some dumbass web editor is sitting at his or her cubicle, herping and derping about search engine optimization and new visitors because OMG, most of us still like Obama. Sometimes I wish I lived in the 18th century.
Anyway, back to the article itself. Hmm, President Barack Obama's personal popularity may be one reason his approval rating held steady? Wow, this reeks of expecting a certain result in a survey, not finding it, and designing some straw man excuse for not finding the result you were looking for.
The new numbers indicate that Obama remains popular, with 79% of Americans saying the president is likable.
"This underscores just how important the president's personal characteristics have been to him, and how useful it is to the White House that IRS, Benghazi, and AP controversies have not dimmed Obama's personal popularity so far," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
Or, alternatively, it means nothing. It means nothing because politicians are almost always inherently likable people - Bill Clinton? Ronald Reagan? Everyone loved those guys. Smooth operator, that Slick Willie. He could charm the pants off a cowboy.
But likability has nothing to do with approval - approval exists along party lines, and likability is a personal characteristic. So, I don't know, maybe this happened:
- The entire political machine has its head up its collective ass when it comes to interpreting and understanding research; specifically, they tend to over-state marginal differences and try to materialize stories out of the ether when no true data patterns exist.
- The political establishment thinks the American people care about Benghazi, the IRS scandal, and other issues ostensibly plaguing the Presidency. In reality, most American people do not, and the data supporting the opposite point is rigged - specifically engineered by research companies on behalf of their journalistic-machine clients to make it look like randomly selected Americans participating in a research survey care about something they do not care about.
- Because no one cares in the universe about these issues, Obama's approval ratings don't move.
- BUT WAIT, EVERYONE CARES! IT MUST BE BECAUSE HE'S SO DURN LIKABLE, THAT OBAMA.
Last month, I was randomly selected to participate in Quinnipiac University's weekly political phone survey of New Jersey residents. I was asked many "yes/no" style questions regarding my opinions on many different topics germane to current events in New Jersey. For instance, should Mike Rice have been fired? What about Rutgers President Barchi? Do I approve of Governor Christie's performance regarding jobs and the economy? Hurricane Sandy relief?
On several occasions, I did not know how to respond, so I simply said "I don't know." But that's me being honest, and also being a survey researcher by trade and knowing that the "Don't know" option exists. Most people, forced into a yes/no type question, will answer either yes or no. And this is what ends up happening, as a result:
Fifty-five percent say the IRS and Benghazi matters are very important to the nation and 53% saying the same thing about the AP case.
"But that doesn't quite make either of them another Watergate - at least, not yet. Nearly two-thirds say [sic] that Watergate was very important to the nation at the time; 58% say [sic] Iran-Contra was very important during the Reagan administration," says Holland. "So Americans see the current controversies as very important - maybe as much as Iran-Contra, but not yet at Watergate levels."
First, how does something being "very important to the nation" translate to "I dislike how the President is performing, overall," even if the President were involved in the scandal (besides the point it's debatable the extent to which he knew about either issue)?
Second, I know virtually no one who thinks that the IRS, Benghazi, or AP scandals are very important to the nation - but maybe that's just my friends. So I doubt your data's integrity, fundamentally speaking.
Third, what does it mean that Americans find these scandals roughly as important as Iran-Contra, but not as important as Watergate? I know that Watergate got Nixon impeached and forced his eventual resignation; Iran-Contra is a blip in the history of the 1980's. Some historical context would be useful, here.
The poll also indicates that 52% say the president can manage the government effectively. That's up 10 percentage points since the last time CNN asked the question, in 2011.
As always, Obama's Achilles heel remains policy issues. Most Americans say they don't agree with him on the size and power of the federal government.
How... how are you allowed to contradict yourself like that in the real world? You just said one thing in Paragraph A, and the absolute opposite thing in Paragraph B. Part and parcel of managing the government effectively is making policy decisions on the size and power of the government. If I contradicted myself this blatantly, like, EVER, at my job, I'd get called out on it in a heartbeat. And I'm not writing an article for the front page of a website that draws 10 gazillion page views her hour!
Seriously, did someone with a shred of common sense vet this article before going public with it? Or were they too busy ironing out the pastel color scheme for their next incorrect use of a map, when a table would have sufficed?
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