UNCONVENTIONAL WORLD RECORDS

Approval ratings for US presidents were started by Gallup after the Second World War. The lowest approval ratings were by not by George W Bush, even though at 28 percent (at the time of writing), it’s pretty bad. Richard Nixon’s 23 percent, at the aftermath of the Watergate Scandal is worse, but still it’s not the worst ever.

The worst ever approval rating for a US president is for President Harry S Truman in February 1952, at 22 percent. How did it turn out so bad for someone who started out on his presidency at an approval rating of almost 90 percent?

It was in the ending stages of the Korean War. More than 36,000 American army personnel had died and Truman had sacked the popular General Douglas MacArthur in April 1951, who led the US Army in Korea. In an interview with Time Magazine, Truman was quoted to have said “I fired him [MacArthur] because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.”

Problems in Korea and general dissatisfaction with the sacking of MacArthur made Truman very unpopular, even his own party looked to other candidates for the upcoming presidential election. Truman, who was seeking a third term as president, lost to Estes Kefauver in March 1952 in the New Hampshire primary. That means he did not even make it as a Democrat candidate for the presidency. That’s quite a fall. Hence, Truman’s reelection campaign could not even be started.

However, 22 percent seems quite high when compared to probably the lowest approval rating for a national leader in a democracy. Single digit figures (5 to 8 percent) approval ratings have been quoted for Alejandro Toledo in 2004, who was President of Peru between 2001 and 2006.

During his reign, Peru’s economy grew at an impressive 6 percent and inflation was low. However, living conditions for most ordinary Peruvians did not improve – Toledo was unable to deal with their problems. Add to that allegations of “self-assessed salaries for his wife and himself” damned Toledo to the lowest approval rating of any president in Latin America or perhaps any democracy in the world.

Sources
wsj.com
Wikipedia on Harry S Truman
Wikipedia on Alejandro Toledo
Roper Center Public Opinion Archives
The BBC

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