George W. Bush's Post-Presidential Approval Rating Ticks Up

I wrote yesterday about a new Gallup poll showing that Bill Clinton is now more popular than Barack Obama. I noted but didn't comment on the fact that the same poll shows that George W. Bush's approval rating had skyrocketed all the way to ... 45 percent.

[See a slide show of the 10 worst presidents.]

I was among those who chortled at reports last weekend that National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn of Texas appeared on C-SPAN last weekend and said that "President Bush's stock has gone up a lot since he left office" and that "people are looking back with a little more--with more fondness on President Bush's administration."

Cornyn's comments came on the heels of National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions' waxing nostalgic for "the exact same agenda" which we suffered through for the eight years of the Bush reign. (The NRCC's flacks later spun that Sessions wasn't actually talking about the Bush years.)

Sessions later met with reporters and told them that Bush won't be hitting the campaign trail for GOP candidates this fall. "He's not interested," Sessions said. This disinterest might have had something to do with his radioactive poll numbers mired in the 30s. The last time Gallup checked, in March, his approval rating was 35 percent.

Is Bush entering a post-presidential renaissance? We'll wait for more data points. In the mean time you can rest assured that if Bush does want to hit the campaign trail, the Democrats will happily cover his expenses.

• Check out our editorial cartoons on the 2010 campaigns.
  
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• See a slide show of the 10 worst presidents.

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