HEALTHY PESSIMISM:

Bush has highest approval before his first midterm election of any president in 50 years (The Associated Press, 10/29/02)

Republicans entered the last week before elections buoyed by a GOP leader with the highest job approval ratings in half a century for a president entering his first midterm elections, according to a new poll.

President Bush had a job approval of 67 percent headed into the midterm elections, according to the ABC News poll, which is slightly better than the 61 percent job approval President Eisenhower had in the Gallup poll before the 1954 midterm elections.

So, that sounds great, right? Well, consider this: in that 1954 midterm the GOP, with a popular Ike, lost control of both houses of Congress, losing one Senate seat and 18 House seats. One assumes that Republicans won't lose that many House seats, but they don't have that big a margin of error and they would actually need to pick up Senate seats to take control there. Three months ago that at least seemed like a remote possibility--because Bob Torricelli (NJ) and Paul Wellstone would likely both have lost--but now it looks like the Democrats will gain a seat or two instead (AR & CO look like sure pick ups [with NH, NC, & TN in danger] whereas the GOP has no comparably likely gains). In sum, keeping the House would mark a victory of historic proportions, as would just breaking even in the Senate races. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 29, 2002 8:25 PM