Political Partisanship, the Internet and Presidential Approval

Are death threats and regularly broadcasted rage throwbacks to similar times in American history, or is it a new phenomenon that a quarter of the Republican party thinks our president is, without exaggeration, the Antichrist? I recently took a turn through Gallup's Presidential Approval Center to get some answers about how today's political and cultural climate truly differs from the past.
 
I wasn't surprised to find that, at least in terms of presidential approval, Americans are more polarized now than ever before. Not until George W. Bush took office, in 2001, did the nation begin to see such a dramatic gap in public perception. Most of Bush's presidency saw a gap of approval well over 50 percent. The exception: The week following September 11 there was a 55 percent increase in approval from Democrats, which brought the parties to only 16 percentage points apart.
 
Sure, there have been presidents, such as Kennedy, who have rivaled Obama with their impressive approval ratings from the Democrats. And others, like Truman, who had Republican disapproval ratings as low as Obama's are today. But the gap between the parties was never this big---Obama's gap now is almost 70 percent, though his overall approval is about 48 percent.
 
So why now? In an op-ed last month, Frank Rich at the New York Times said that the current "tsunami of anger" is something new, and while it has taken shape in absurd denials of Obama's citizenship and violent reactions to his health care bill, it's not really about health care or a birth certificate. "Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress," he wrote. In other words, this anger could, in part, be about losing the safety and power of being in the majority---a position the middle-aged white male has enjoyed throughout this country's history. For the first time, the racial and cultural landscape is such that their fears are not completely unfounded.
 
So there's that. Maybe the disapproval part of polarization is indicative of a demographic shift. But I think it's safe to say the approval gap also has a lot to do with media influence. With the Internet explosion, not only are we exposed to massive amounts of information that can rile us, it's now much easier for more Americans to watch other Americans get enraged. It's no longer just a weekly fireside chat on the radio that we can react to, but an infiinite number of videos and blogs and tweets. And with this regular exposure to people who are enraged or excited, the most obvious way to join the conversation seems to be to yell back. If Joe the Plumber has his say, then we should too. It becomes a battle of who can yell louder, and one that seems to result in party polarization. Thus, the feedback loop of punditry evolves.
 
In some ways the Web gives us more outlets for conversation, but it also just drives us further from people with different views. If presidential approval ratings are any indication of how excited we are, I'd like to see a study of how Internet evolution has affected those ratings. Maybe the correlation would take us one step closer to understanding why we're so darn emotional. 
 
Read more from YPNation on the state of U.S. politics.
 
(Photo credit: M.V. Jantzen; C.C. 2.0)