How much do members of the opposite party dislike whoever happens to be president? A lot, and the feeling seems to be getting stronger.
A Quinnipiac University poll found that Barack Obama was the most frequent choice of Americans who were asked to name the worst president since World War II (33 percent compared with 28 percent who named George W. Bush). As a measure of people’s considered beliefs about presidential quality, the question is likely to overrepresent more recent presidents. But this sort of poll is instructive about the extent of the polarization among the public – in particular, about the visceral hostility to the president that has become routine among opposition partisans.