Truman and Bush Jr., both of whom later became ‘despised’, hit around 90% popularity at some point during their leadership, meaning that popularity can sway wildly over the years and with the right media hype.
Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su
Reuters recently ran with the big headline that everyone online is reacting to: Trump approval falls to 33%, lowest of his presidency, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds. The interesting thing is that having a 33% approval rating is quite on par for the course when it comes to being the U.S. President. Despite American pride in Democracy it is very normal to have an ‘unfavorable’ leader sit pretty in the White House and even retain power for multiple terms. Lincoln sure was right that you “can’t please all of the people all of the time” but ultimately you don’t even need to please half of them to maintain power in modern America and in today’s Europe the bar is even lower.
The only Americans Presidents, since being recorded, to maintain a ‘Putinesque’ 60%+ average approval rating were George H.W. Bush (61%), Eisenhower (65%), and the photogenic Kennedy (70%), who, according to this public opinion did seemingly more for the people than any other American leader… and got shot for it. But the interesting thing is that in contrast all the other Presidents have an average floating somewhere in the 40%-50% range with a few outliers slightly poking out above 50%. This indicates a few things that we should take into consideration:
- Roughly speaking in a generic sense about half the population at any given time doesn’t approve of the President. George Bush Jr. was portrayed by the Mainstream Media and pre-smartphone internet as being utterly loathed by the American masses (who voted for him twice) but he is ultimately standing tall for posterity in that average 40%+ normative category for White House dwellers. That is to say that the supposedly clownish and despised Bush II is no different from any of the other lords of mediocrity around him.
The ‘not a crook’ Richard Nixon, whose presidency was at the time a blemish on American history, actually has a higher average approval rating (49%) than Trump 1 (41%) or Biden (42%). If we were to read a high school history textbook this would seem impossible and yet it is the case.
- Even Presidents at their absolute worst moments Truman hitting (22%) and Bush Jr. hitting (25%) means that roughly one in four Americans still supports them. No matter how terrible a presidency may be a fourth of the locals will be down for it, or perhaps this indicates that there have never been any truly bad presidencies at all? America has never even gotten close to the single digit popularity ratings of poor buffer nations’ leaders that are ripe for Color Revolution. Thus, it is important to always keep in mind that one in four of us in the 50 States will go for ‘whatever’ the White House does, and no American President has gotten anywhere near clownish dictator approval ratings.
3. Interestingly, Truman and Bush Jr., both of whom later became ‘despised’, hit around 90% popularity at some point during their leadership, meaning that popularity can sway wildly over the years and with the right media hype. The key thing is the hype must reflect reality to some extent for as stated above raw media narratives do not completely affect approval ratings.
This is not to say that the actions of certain leaders were meaningless and that all that matters is hype, but as they say ‘presidents change but U.S. foreign policy remains the same”. After Kennedy, have any of these leaders done anything truly daring, revolutionary or bold enough to justify a popularity spike? Besides Bush II taking vengeance on those who didn’t perpetrate 9/11, seemingly ‘nothing ever happens’ in a grand enough fashion to push the public towards handing out truly idyllic approval ratings.
4 If American Presidents successfully sit in a stew of C grade results, EU leaders are far worse. As of April 2026 ‘favorable opinion’ shined on Starmer (24%), Macron (23%), Merz (22%), etc. That is to say, they are all operating on average at the worst low points in American presidential history… what a continent! But note, just like in America, that still about one out of every four EU citizens still somehow looks favorably on the pseudo leaders of these failed states.
Ultimately, if we look at things more globally, the fact that Trump is at an all-time low doesn’t matter because one good PR campaign could sway a public, that is easy to sway, with media emotion. Even if he stays on bad terms with the masses he is ultimately no different from any other presidents except the golden trio of General Eisenhower, Bush Sr. and JFK. Trump remains well within the ‘normative’ category and so this explosive discussion of his ‘collapse’ is the exact kind of ‘fake news’ that Donald Trump used to criticize during his campaigns.
Europe is a land of fake democracies with even more fake presidents/prime ministers and in the favorable ratings from a few months ago the top leader of the heartland of human rights was Mette Frederiksen from Denmark with a 47% score. That is to say the best leader in Europe was still under 50% in terms of favorability/approval. Historical inertia is a powerful force and looking at this picture how can anyone say the EU has anything to do with democracy?
Based on the above, it is always stunning to hear how Russia is a ‘dictatorship’ when Putin’s popularity seemingly never dips below 60% and tends to stay somewhere in the 75%-85% margin. Essentially, the Putin ‘normal’ is equal to the best moments of the best U.S. Presidents in terms of popularity rating. Within Russia, unofficially, the fact of the President’s solid popularity is understood to be a justification for action. It is widely believed in Russia that if the leader is popular, then he has the mandate of the people and should be free to act. That is to say “we the masses approve of him, thus he may do as he sees fit”. Strangely, only in Russia, in terms of the nations described above, does approval and favorability actually seem to mean something in politics.
Ultimately for Trump this slump does not matter because:
– He has basically the same stats as other generic 20th/21st century U.S. Presidents.
– Rule by popularity mandate is seemingly a Russian phenomenon and won’t alter his presidency one way or the other. Popularity for the White House doesn’t do much.
– One out of four people is some kind of hardcore statist who will approve of the president no matter what.
– The media does play a huge role in shaping our perception of reality but not entirely.
