In this hyper-partisan era, most presidents will struggle with approval...

[Drunken Irishman]

Beyond the newness of a presidency or a national tragedy, I wouldn't be surprised if mediocre-to-bad poll numbers becomes commonplace for future presidents. The vitriol born out of the 1990s is really defining the political landscape of today - a country divided along hyper-partisan lines where any type of true working together no longer exists. Here forward, every Democrat is going to despise the Republican president and every Republican is going to despise the Democratic president - it is what it is.

But it wasn't always that way. Democrats voted for Reagan and Republicans, not the diehards, mind you, supported LBJ and Kennedy.

Democrats certainly had to have voted Nixon in '72 for his landslide to work out the way it did.

In fact, in 2012, Obama won only 6% of so-called Republican voters. In 1996, Clinton won 13% of Republican support - enough of a difference to make a significant change in the electoral landscape. But even that, compared to recent history, was less than what other popular presidents saw among the opposing party. In 1988, Bush won 17% of those who called themselves Democrats - eleven more points than Obama would win Republican support 24 years later. Reagan managed to win 26% of Democrats in 1984, which largely helped his landslide - and that helped define a term we still hear today, "Reagan Democrats". In fact, in '80, he actually did one-point better among Democratic voters against Carter, winning 27% of the party.

Even Ford managed to carry 20% of Democratic support in '76.

You'll be hard pressed to find numbers like that today - from either side.

In 2000, Bush won 11% of Democratic voters and Gore 8% of Republican voters.
In 2004, Bush again won 11% of Democratic voters and Kerry 6% of Republican voters.
In 2008, McCain won 10% of Democratic voters and Obama 9% of Republican voters.
In 2012, Romney won 7% of Democratic voters - the fewest amount since at least the 1976 election for a Republican.

But the trend is clear, since H.W. Bush's solid 17% share of the Democratic vote, the country is becoming increasingly split along political lines. It's unfathomable today to believe a Democrat or Republican could win 27% of the opposing party's vote in a presidential election.

So, that means, on the whole, 35-40% of the country is already dead set against the President. There might be some sympathetic or historical approval bump - but that's about it and they're rarely sustainable. It's why Bush, after the bluster of 9/11 vanished, his approval tanked and why, now, Obama's approval finds itself in the toilet: the country is far more ideological today.

That's not going to change when Obama leaves office and whomever replaces him takes over. That partisanship will remain and will remain for the unforeseeable future.

I blame the Republicans for this. I blame their tactics in the 90s for creating this monster. It doesn't help, though, that the internet has driven us deeper into the ideological basement. Let's be honest, the internet is more an echo chamber than anything else. It can be a tool of enlightenment, but it's mostly used as a tool for like-minded individuals to vent about things they don't like.

We sign on, go to our partisan corners and stew. The left with DU and the right with FR.

Reagan Democrats don't exist anymore. JFK Republicans are long gone too.

That creates a country where you will almost always pull your support from your party and the middle - moderate voters who are not, somehow, influenced by the ideological bent of partisan politics. Obama won those voters 56-41 over Romney, even though he lost the independent vote 45-50 to Mitt Romney.

Obama's approval is in the tank because the Republicans have been good at playing partisan politics with their fake scandals. The Democrats still nearly universally support him, as do most liberals, but the right, who he never had from the get-go (about 35-40% of this country) and more moderates (who he did win in '12) don't.

And that type of divide is certainly going to happen to the next president too. It's also something nearly every recent president didn't have to deal with. Even Clinton, to an extent, didn't have FOX News blaring how evil he was throughout his presidency. That hurts - it widens that divide to the point where even once sane Republicans have a difficult time supporting a Democratic president.