I just browsed about a bit, looking for the US reaction to Cameron’s first visit to the White House. Apart from the amusing way they always refer to him as “Prime Minister Cameron”, the focus of their main media outlets seemed as click-chasingly focussed on domestic news stories, as they are almost all over the world – USA Today led with a story about possible droughts in 30 counties, while the New York Times focussed on senate hearings on extending unemployment benefit; fair enough I suppose.
What I found really amusing, if unsurprising, was Fox News – it made no mention at all of Cameron’s visit, but has a big link to an approval rating chart comparing Bush’s and Obama’s approval ratings after two years in office. The amusing part of it was that while you can see the full range of ratings for Obama broken out by voting intention, for Bush you only see the aggregate score, which at 65% is much higher than Obama’s. For Obama, about 13% of Republicans and about 76% of Democrats approve, giving him a median of 43%. Of course it could be that they just didn’t want to clutter the graphic, but what it is hiding is that Democrats clearly did not spend the Bush years in some ludicrously partisan pipe dream.
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