John Roberts
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday began its hearings on the confirmation of John Roberts to be chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Most observers assume Roberts' eventual confirmation by the full Senate is a foregone conclusion.
The American public appears to have no problem with that eventuality. Fifty-eight percent of Americans say the Senate should vote in favor of Roberts' confirmation, while 27% say the Senate should not confirm him.
Katrina
We now have new data from Gallup's Sept. 8-11 poll on the American public's reaction to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. There's a lot there, and Gallup Poll Senior Editor David Moore has summarized a good deal of the data in today's lead story on gallup.com.
Here are six highlights I find interesting.
1. Americans are paying a great deal of attention to the Katrina situation.
Fifty-eight percent of Americans are following the news about Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding in New Orleans very closely, with another 38% following the story somewhat closely.
Gallup has asked this "closely following" question about a variety of news events since the early 1990s. The only two news events on that lengthy list that received higher "very closely" percentages are the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (77% followed this event very closely) and the war with Iraq in March 2003 (63% followed very closely).
2. Americans are significantly more positive about the recent responses of President George W. Bush, FEMA, the residents of New Orleans, and state and local officials than they were about their initial responses.
This conclusion is based on retrospective data. The most recent poll asked Americans to rate the responses of: a) Bush, b) FEMA and other federal government agencies responsible for handling emergencies, c) state and local officials in Louisiana, and d) the residents of New Orleans, in terms of both their immediate efforts after the hurricane struck, and their more recent efforts.
There is -- perhaps not unexpectedly -- a significant difference in the two sets of ratings.
Americans rate the current endeavors of all four entities more positively than their responses just after the hurricane hit. All four receive less than 50% "good" ratings (either "very good" or "good") for their immediate reactions, and more than 50% "good" ratings for their current response efforts.
Bush receives slightly higher ratings than the other three groups in terms of his immediate response, but all four receive roughly equal ratings of their current handling of the situation.
3. Americans reject the argument that the federal government was slow in rescuing people because they are poor or black.
There has been a good deal of speculation (and even accusations) that the federal government's response to the situation in New Orleans was slower than it should have been because much of the population trapped in the city after it flooded was poor or black.
Americans generally reject that hypothesis. Seventy-one percent say the federal government was not slow in rescuing the New Orleans residents because they are poor, and 80% say the government was not slow because the residents are black.
Even among Democrats, who have been the most critical of the federal government's response, only 47% say the response was slow because the residents are primarily poor, and 33% say the response was slow because many of the residents are black.
4. Americans give positive ratings to media coverage.
Oftentimes after a high-profile news event, the immediate days of media coverage are followed by a secondary review of the coverage itself. In the case of Katrina, there have been suggestions that the coverage has been too negative, that reporters perhaps became too involved with the story and lost their objectivity, and that there has been too much focus on blame and responsibility.
The public generally rejects the idea that the media covered the story irresponsibly. More than three-quarters (77%) of Americans say the news media acted responsibly in its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, including 63% of Republicans.
5. Most Americans believe Katrina will hurt them personally in the pocketbook.
Forty-three percent of Americans believe Katrina will hurt their families' financial situations a lot, and another 37% say the storm and its aftermath will affect their finances a little. Thus, all in all, 8 in 10 Americans say Katrina will negatively affect their family finances.
6. Americans support the departure of FEMA Director Michael Brown.
Former FEMA Director Michael Brown has come under withering criticism for his agency's handing of the Katrina situation, and his image was not helped by the TIME magazine story alleging exaggerations and mischaracterizations on Brown's official resume.
Brown resigned from FEMA on Monday, after the Bush administration, fronted by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, sent Brown back to Washington on Friday.
The American public won't lose sleep over Brown's departure. According to the weekend poll (completed the day before Brown's resignation), 47% of Americans said Brown should be fired and 37% said he should not be fired (16% expressed no opinion).
Brown also received negative image ratings in the Sept. 8-11 poll. Fifty-four percent of Americans said they have an unfavorable opinion of Brown, while only 19% expressed a favorable opinion. Those ratings are much more negative than those of any other person associated with the hurricane relief effort that Gallup tested: Chertoff, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.
President Bush
The most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll shows Bush's overall job approval rating has remained roughly constant compared with results from Gallup's last poll. The Sept. 8-11 poll shows his job approval rating at 46% and his disapproval rating at 51%, with 3% having no opinion. In Gallup's Aug. 28-30 poll, conducted just as the hurricane hit New Orleans, Bush's ratings were almost identical at 45% approve, 52% disapprove, and 3% no opinion.
Bush's sub-approval ratings show a wide variance across different issues and policy areas. Bush actually gets lower ratings for his handling of gas prices (22%), the economy (39%), and the situation in Iraq (40%) than he does for his handling of the response to Hurricane Katrina (43%).
These data show that a majority of Americans are critical of Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina, but that this factor appears not to have made a demonstrable difference in Bush's overall rating. Indeed, Bush had a job approval rating of 40% -- his administration low point -- in an August Gallup Poll conducted before the hurricane hit.
Iraq
The weekend poll shows no change in Americans' views of the situation in Iraq. Fifty-three percent of Americans say that sending U.S. troops to Iraq was a mistake, unchanged from two previous polls conducted in August.
The poll does show an increase in the percentage of Americans who believe that all U.S. troops should be removed from Iraq, compared with a poll conducted two years ago, just months after the invasion took place. Forty-one percent of Americans say the United States should withdraw all troops from Iraq now, 35% say the United States should continue to keep a significant number of troops in Iraq for as long as needed regardless of how many casualties occur, and 19% say the United States should withdraw all troops from Iraq if the number killed becomes too high.
In July 2003, when Gallup first asked this question, only 26% said the United States should withdraw all troops from Iraq now.
"Better in My Backyard"
The 37th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools was released last month. The poll continues to show that the more contact Americans have with schools, the more positively they rate them. Only 24% of Americans would give a grade of "A" or "B" to the nation's schools as a whole, while 48% rate the public schools in their own communities with an "A" or a "B," and 69% of public school parents give an "A" or a "B" to the school their oldest child attends.
This phenomenon -- which Gallup terms "better in my backyard," or BIMBY -- occurs on other issues as well. Americans rate their local congressperson more positively than they rate Congress as a whole, rate their personal healthcare situations more positively than healthcare in the nation as a whole, and most generally, rate their own personal satisfaction more positively than their satisfaction with the way things are going in the nation as a whole.
In my opinion, the main reason for this interesting discrepancy between local and national ratings has to do with the news media. At the local level, people can make their own determinations of how things are going. At the national level, they rely on the media reports, and perhaps not surprisingly, media reports tend to focus on things going wrong in the country. It's no wonder that Americans tend to be more negative about things "out there" than things about which they have firsthand experience.
Height of Your Life
A new Gallup/Pfizer poll on the effect of height underscores the conventional wisdom that being taller is better in the workplace. More than three-quarters (78%) of Americans agree that a man who is noticeably taller than other men his age has an easier chance of being promoted than a man who is noticeably shorter. Two-thirds believe the same is true for women in the workplace.
Still, not all men (nor all women) wish they were taller. Sixty-three percent of men and 59% of women like their height just the way it is. Few men or women wish they were shorter, while a little more than a third of both genders say they would like to be taller. Not surprisingly, the shorter people are, the more likely they are to wish they were taller.