Ask A Genius 997: Motherfuckers in Politics
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/07/02
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, www.rickrosner.org
Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, www.in-sightpublishing.com
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If people in America have less concern about a particular politician, they simply hate politicians now. They even hated them or, at least, disliked them strongly in many ways. What I am noticing now, especially based on the dual dislike more than like for the two presidential candidates in American politics, is that, they don’t like politicians generally.
Rick Rosner: Okay, that’s true.
Jacobsen: That’s a pervasive phenomenon, leaning more towards hate of politicians. This may be indicative of the social media clashes, which are better than actual physical attacks or an actual civil war, right?
Rosner: It’s easier to be a motherfucker on social media than it is to be in person. Is it that way in Canada? Do all politicians get hate…
Jacobsen: No, not everyone hates their politicians in Canada. Canada probably looks like American politics in the 90s or 2000s.
Rosner: Well, that would be nice. That would be nice.
Jacobsen: It’s like watching a Harvard lecture with some of these kids, saying, “I don’t want to be uncouth.” It’s somewhere between that and insulting one another’s golf game. There can be things shouted out about one another, but it hasn’t degraded too much.
Rosner: All right. So, yes, you can see it in approval polls of presidents. Eight years ago, right?
Jacobsen: Yes, I’m looking at the general trends. You have to get the general trends correct, and you have to back those up with evidence. Then you can start making particular arguments.
Rosner: All right. But you’re right.
Jacobsen: If you don’t have the general facts correct, or if you can’t make a general point, then I don’t think the particulars can follow from the argument. The general argument I would make about American politics right now is that things are somewhere between dislike or hate for politicians generally.
Rosner: That’s true. I’m going to cite the clearest example that I know of because you can see it all on one screen: FiveThirtyEight.com, which is the poll aggregator. Which has a ton of problems because polls have a ton of problems. Like there was a poll that came out today showing Biden having fallen. Anyway, it was bad for Biden. I looked up the polling company, and they’re all fucking landlines. It’s crazy that anybody would do an all-landline poll and present it as legitimate in 2024. But that aside, Gallup Polls, which is the oldest and most venerable polling company, started polling presidential approval in about 1944, 80 years ago, at the end of FDR’s presidency. That means they’ve polled the month-by-month approval of presidents for 80 years.
If you go to FiveThirtyEight, there’s a page that has the approval curve of each of those presidents. You can look at some presidents. There are ups and downs. The first George Bush had the highest presidential approval ever, I think, after 9/11, when the country came together to support him. He had like 95% approval, which is unheard of. Besides blips like that, the general trend is so clear as you look across the average approval drops president by president. And also, there’s a curve for each president where people start by briefly giving the president the benefit of the doubt. So, right at the first two weeks, it’s high, and then most presidents lose 10 or 20 points of approval. Some of them can climb out of that. But the curves are instructive. Yes, they support the point that Americans hate politicians in general.
Jacobsen: Do they hate Republicans, independents, or Democrats more?
Rosner: We’ve had three consecutive elections with candidates with high disapproval numbers: Clinton versus Trump, Trump versus Biden, and Biden versus Trump again. These elections are always a bummer for the whole country. The country feels better if there’s at least one charismatic candidate. The last charismatic candidate that most people could feel good about was Obama. Before that, even people who thought George W. Bush did a crap job could see that he was gregarious and likable. It was said that he’s somebody you’d have a beer with, so he was pretty charismatic. Before that, it’s hard to remember, but Bill Clinton was super charismatic. Before Clinton was the first George Bush, who was not charismatic. He was fine; people didn’t hate him, but he was kind of bland and only served one term. He got defeated by Clinton. Before the first George Bush, you had Reagan, who was hyper-charismatic. So we’re used to charming candidates, but we haven’t had any of those for president since 2008, and it adds to the hate and the misery.
I think in 2028, maybe Newsom could be a charismatic candidate. He’s a good-looking guy with good hair, seems to present himself well, but he’s not going to run now. He wants to run in 2028. He doesn’t want to be forced to run now and lose. Regardless of how charismatic Newsom is, he’s going to be a tough sell because A, we’re polarized, and B, he’s the governor of the state that conservatives hate the most. Gretchen Whitmer, maybe she’s pretty charming, and she comes from Michigan, which is a state that both sides can like. That’s all I got for this unless you have more.
Jacobsen: Who is a politician who stands for things different than you on the conservative spectrum but who you consider competent?
Rosner: Every liberal’s example of that is Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, two politicians who don’t hold office anymore because they couldn’t. In Liz Cheney’s case, she’s super conservative, standing for a bunch of stuff I hate. But they both have integrity and say what needs to be said about Trump. Politicians that I could vote for, that would hold off the apocalypse, Mitt Romney. If I could be told, I could make a wish and either take my chances with Biden winning or have Mitt Romney be president with perfect certainty in 2024, I’d go with Mitt Romney. He’s a perfectly reasonable guy. He gets sucked into bad policies that are consistent with Republican policies, but he’s able to hold himself apart from horrible Republican-ness a lot. Again, somebody who’s not running for re-election.
Most of the Republicans that I have any degree of respect for aren’t running for re-election because they can’t win in the current environment. Romney came up with Obamacare. When he was governor of Massachusetts, he developed a healthcare plan for the state that is quite similar to Obamacare. He also ran the Winter Olympics in Utah. If you want to go historical, Eisenhower was fine. Teddy Roosevelt was great. I probably don’t know much about Calvin Coolidge. He might have been okay. Silent Cal was a very nondescript presence. He said, “The business of America is business,” or something like that.
Jacobsen: The inverse of that question: Who are the liberal politicians you consider incompetent?
Rosner: Jill Stein is a piece of shit, Russian-compromised, monkey-wrenching the whole system. Senator Robert Menendez is an idiot who took bribes in gold bars and a bunch of other stuff. I’m tired. There are more clownish national-level politicians who are Republicans than there are Democrats. Is there anybody I can think of who’s always pulling shady stuff on the Democratic side that I think is cheesy? Besides the people I mentioned. Nah, I don’t like Bernie supporters, but I like him, the man himself. Ralph Nader, a liberal who popped up on Twitter today, blaming Hillary for creating the hell we’re in right now by running an incompetent campaign in 2016 and not getting elected. Thousands of people told Ralph Nader to fuck off because he’s the one who helped Gore lose the 2000 election, which gave us some of the conservative justices who are on the court now and making things shitty. So Ralph Nader, I think, is pretty much an asshole at this point.
All right. Talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.
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