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Remember when serious American media types were swooning
over the young and vital French president Emmanuel Macron. The young man had
transformed French politics, seemingly overnight, and showed that the French
people are so sophisticated that they could happily elect a man who had married his
mother. Instantly, Macron was compared favorably to Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Bieber. Both were presented as the perfect antidote to President Donald
Trump.
Well, now, we read that Macron has managed one highly
dubious achievement. His approval ratings are lower than Trump’s. Few
politicians, even in notoriously fickle France, have seen their poll numbers
drop so precipitously in so short a time.
While Trump is polling at around 37% approval, Macron has
just reached 30%. He is not yet at Francois Hollande level—single digits—but he
is moving quickly in that direction. Aamna Mohdin reports on Quartz:
Emmanuel
Macron’s approval rating is sinking fast.
Just
30% approve of France’s newest president, according to the YouGov France
poll published
today (Sept. 4). Macron, who was elected in May, saw his
approval-rating drop from 43% in July to 36% in August, and finally 30% in
September. Macron’s approval rating was just slightly lower than prime minister
Edouard Philippe, whose popularity rate fell to 32% in September.
Vive la
France!
13 comments:
Macron's approval peaked at 64% in June, while Trump's never rose above 46%, so a 34% drop for Macron (to 30%) and only a 10% drop for Trump (to 36%).
The scary thing to think about is the best way to raise your approval rating is to start a war after a terrorist attack. George W's approval jumped from 51% to 90% after 9/11.
And I bet Kim Jong-un's approval is sitting close to 100%, now close to gaining the ability to send mass death to and city on the face of the earth.
Perhaps politicians are better off being happy with low approval, at least between elections. Congress is of course far lower, although people generally approve of their own senators and representatives compared to the body as a whole.
I'm sure they have their reasons for disliking him. If he starts a war, it will have to be in France, Ares.
Justin Bieber has some actual talent I presume. Justin Trudeau just looks good. Bieber for PM!
Mild Bill
Hey, good thing they get that big meanie LePen in...that's what's important, I suppose.
Stupid Frogs...
Blahgga the Hutt
Ugh, there should have been a "didn't" in there...
Blahgga the Hutt
Why did Ares Oly come out in support of the Taliban? This this kind of bag of hammers dumb comment common here?
Oly, do you justify FDR's declaration of war against Japan to be primarily motivated by ratings? That calls for a "yes" or "no, I don't have a clue about what I'm talking about".
Jack Fisher said... Oly, do you justify FDR's declaration of war against Japan to be primarily motivated by ratings?
Actually in that case I'm open to the "conspiracy theory" that the U.S. had broken the Japanese codes, and knew an attack was imminent, and allowed the Pearl Harbor sneak attack to occur, because that would rally public opinion towards his own belief that the U.S. had to enter WW2. Of course FDR had already blocked the Japanese access to oil as well, which encouraged their attack.
So yes, he turned a negative public opinion of war into a positive. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, and Japanese immigrants perhaps. Once people felt under attack, they turned to a strong president who would protect them.
That conspiracy theory has been dead for years. Point to any prime source evidence that the US, Brits or Dutch had broken the current JN25 naval code prior to the attacks on Dec. 7/8. You can't, because there aren't any. While the US was reading the diplomatic Purple code, these messages contained no operational orders.
The second part of that conspiracy theory -- allowing the destruction of the Pacific Fleet (and the consequent loss of Allied territories relying on relief from an intact fleet under the current war plan) is likewise beyond stupid. A long range search plane that "discovered" the Japanese fleet before the attack went in would have given FDR causus belli and saved thousands of lives and millions of dollars of destruction.
If you're going to carry on this discussion, you'd better have all your facts down cold because I've seen all the bullshit there is to see about this.
From stories I have heard, JN25 was not broken until much later. I can't provide any good source material for this, The US built from scratch a Japanese sending unit without ever seeing one or any type schematics, by simply studying the wave forms on their O scopes that they they were intercepting from the Japanese. I want to emphasize I only know this from hearsay.
I will throw this in quickly, the general public doesn't really understand the cipher world and especially what breaking a code actually means.
JN25 was broken in Feb. '42. There was a huge backlog of pre-Pearl Harbor intercepts (but always fragmentary) that were not decrypted until much later because they were low priority.
The Navy made horrible decisions in the run-up to PH: the limited code breaking efforts were concentrated on what is known as "the admirals' code" rather than the more important JN, there were turf wars that acted as a bottleneck in the distribution of intelligence, so the Hawaii commanders (Gen. Short and Adm. Kimmel) were denied intelligence that was available to the Philippine command, resulting in Hawaii believing the crisis was security rather than war imminent; Washington's decision to move the Pacific Fleet from its West Coast bases to Hawaii, against the advice of the fleet commander as a show of force but still did not consider PH as being on the "front lines" the way the Philippines were. Long range aircraft (PBYs, B-17s) that could have brought Hawaii's daily search patrols up to the minimum necessary were routed through to the Philippines, etc, etc, etc.
The 2007 NSA study linked below also notes, unlike today, in '41 there was no "rational processing and analytic system" for the decrypted signals, essentially, there was no one putting together the big picture from small pieces. It was still amateur hour.
What Every Cryptologist Should Know About Pearl Harbor
https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/cryptologic-quarterly/assets/files/pearlharbor.pdf
Jack,
My above comments were certainly not addressed to you. It's rather obvious you have a tight handle on the subject.
James, I know, I'm just gassing on a topic I enjoy.
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