Obama Mocks Polls But Spends More On Them Than Bush Did

During his daily press briefing on July 13, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was peppered with questions about why the president’s popularity numbers are in decline and his policy positions are so difficult to sell.

ABC News’s Jake Tapper sought reaction to the network’s newest poll showing that 51 percent of respondents would rather have Republicans running Congress. CNN’s Ed Henry wanted to know why, in that same poll, “six in 10 Americans have little or no faith in the President to make the right decisions.” CBS’s Chip Reid then pointed to his own network’s poll showing that only 13 percent of respondents thought the president’s economic programs had affected them personally.

Exasperated, Gibbs deployed a classic rejoinder: mocking the polling-obsessed media culture.

“You know, in all honesty, Chip, there isn’t a website in the world that doesn’t have a new poll every day,” the press secretary replied. “And if you spent a lot of time sitting around worrying about polls rather than worrying about the people that you’re trying to help, I’m sure you’d get discouraged. But we’re way too busy to sit around looking at polls.”