Gallup: Bush, Clintons Most Admired

Despite relentlessly negative press coverage and a job approval rating mired in the low to mid-thirties, President Bush once again tops this year's USA Today/Gallup year-end list of the nation's most admired men. The president was so described by ten percent of respondents. President Bush has led the poll in every year he has been in office, although his numbers, like his job approval polls, have declined from a high of 39% immediately after the September 11th attacks, to this year's low.

Close in second on this year's list is former president Bill Clinton with eight percent. Mr. Clinton's number has ticked up from last year, when just five percent of respondents said they admired him, as he has enjoyed greater visibility in the press due to his wife Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Among male presidential candidates, Sen. Clinton's chief rival, Sen. Barack Obama leads with five percent. No other male presidential candidate garners more than one percent in the annual survey.

USA Today/Gallup also asks Americans for their most admired women each year. In that poll, Sen. Clinton is tabbed as the most admired woman, commanding eighteen percent of respondents. But, in an eerie parallel to the Democratic primary race, she is followed closely by Oprah Winfrey, famed celebrity endorser turned stump speaker for Sen. Obama. Both women have seen their numbers increase over last year, in part due to the presidential campaign. By contrast, First Lady Laura Bush is named by only three percent as their most admired woman, down from five percent last year.

Polls such as this are greatly influenced by name recognition as opposed to actual accomplishments. Noted practitioners of good works like the Rev. Billy Graham, Pope Benedict XVI, Jimmy Carter, and Nelson Mandela all receive less than three percent in the poll, so it is difficult to take the results as a measure of the true worth of a person's deeds. However, the grouping is useful for gauging what is on American's minds as they end the year. On the men's list, the top four are all politicians: Bush, Clinton, former Vice President and recent Nobel Peace Prize recipient Al Gore, and Obama. Four presidents make the top ten: Bush, Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Carter. Among the women, seven of the top ten are political figures: Sen. Clinton, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.

It is clear from the two lists that Americans enter 2008 with politics very much in the forefront of their thinking, and the lists reflect the nature of the primary races in both parties. Just over one week from the first nominating contest in Iowa, the Republican race is a complete tossup; while the Democratic race is basically a contest between two frontrunners. With Americans doing so much thinking about politics, 2008 is sure to be a very eventful, and perhaps surprising, political year.