Obama: The great divider

Interesting piece in today's Washington Times:

President Obama is becoming the most divisively partisan president in history. At this point, he has less bipartisan support than former President George W. Bush after the Florida recount or former president Bill Clinton, whose first months in office were marred by missteps over gays in the military and the 51-day Waco, Texas siege that killed 74.

After a little more than two months in office, Mr. Obama has created the widest partisan gap in America since pollsters started measuring this in the 1960s. According to a new Pew Research Center poll, 88 percent of Democrats approve of the job he's doing, but only 27 percent of Republicans give him a thumb's up. That means the partisan gap is 61 percentage points. A Rasmussen survey shows that those who strongly disapprove of Mr. Obama have almost doubled. Only 16 percent strongly disapproved of the president on Jan. 21, the day after his inauguration. By Sunday, that number had jumped to 30 percent.

Mr. Obama's partisan gap is particularly jarring when compared to Mr. Bush's bumpy start. With the contentious 2000 Florida recount fresh in Democrats' minds, the partisan gap in April 2001 was 51 percentage points. Amid that controversy, Mr. Bush was enjoying nine percentage points more support among Democrats than Mr. Obama is now getting among Republicans. Mr. Clinton was no darling to Republicans, but his partisan divide was 45 percentage points early in his first year. And before that, former President George H.W. Bush had a gap of only 38 percentage points at the same stage in his presidency. . . . .