President's approval at 72%

I refer here to President Roosevelt's approval rating after the Battle of the Bulge. Josh Marshall's people found a beautiful document prepared in the 1940s; Marshall himself explains why this is not simply a poke-in-the-eye for Fox News—er, Press Secretary Tony Snow:

There's a serious underlying point here about the administration's basic frivolousness in its conduct of the war.

No one thinks you can fight a war or conduct any project of great consequence by following minor oscillations in polls. But long term and imbedded trends in public opinion mean something. In this case, the public can see President Bush doesn't know what he's doing.

Having his flacks go out and compare him to great wartime leaders of the past and insult the American people in the process doesn't change that.