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The Utah Republican Party is taking new approval ratings for Pres. Bush with a giant chunk of Great Salt Lake salt.
The Salt Lake Tribune poll found only 44 percent of Utahns think the president's doing a good job, a first for the traditionally conservative beehive state.
State GOP Chair Stan Lockhart says you need to consider the source of any poll, to begin with. But setting that aside, he says it's easy for people to armchair quarterback once the game is over and another thing entirely to have to make the same calls.
"To give all the blame to President Bush for what's been going on in this country the last six months or so, it's probably a little unfair," Lockhart said.
University of Utah political science professor Dr. Tim Chambless says the poll numbers are a sign of the times. "It also indicates that Utah is starting to take on the viewpoint of the rest of the nation," he said.
Chambless backed that up with the national approval ratings for Pres. Bush from election day, which were in the 20's. But Chambless tells Utah's noon news on KSL it's typical for presidents serving a second term to have their lowest approval ratings in those last two years of office.
However, he says the economy seems to be the big player in Bush's approval ratings.
"We have a president that is leaving office with the worst economy since the 1930's, who inherited a budget surplus and now we're looking at a $1.2 trillion budget deficit," Chambless said.
He says it's hard to guess how history will remember George W. Bush while he's still alive, but Lockhart was more optimistic. "The president probably gets blamed too much when things go poorly with the economy in this country, and he probably gets too much credit when things go well," Lockhart said.
He felt history would be kinder to Bush than the public is now, when we're too close to the situation to be objective.
E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
