OFF THE RECORD

■ Whom the gods would destroy they first give a high Gallup rating. This is the message that close friends should be whispering to President Bush as he basks in the glow of his 70 per cent public-approval rating, a good ten points higher than Ronald Reagan’s rating at the same point in his Administration. From that lofty pinnacle it might appear that being all things to all Americans is working: the President is said, for example, to cite polls at Cabinet meetings in order to silence opposition and make points.

All this is eerily reminiscent of one James Earl Carter of Plains, Georgia. Mr. Carter entered Washington as the reform-minded outsider, with the air of a man bent on chasing the moneychangers from the Temple. Cato has gone back and checked some of the figures, and has found that after the same period of time in office Mr. Carter enjoyed a 66 per cent approval rating: just short of Mr. Bush’s but a full six points higher than Mr. Reagan’s. He left Washington lower down on the approval scale than Richard Nixon ever was. By contrast Mr. Reagan took his lumps early on, and after dropping low during the recession built his popularity back on the basis of his principled confrontations. Even ending his eight years in office with Iran-Contra didn’t hurt him.

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■ Whom the gods would destroy they first give a high Gallup rating. This is the message that close friends should be whispering to President Bush as he basks in the glow of his 70 per cent public-approval rating, a good ten points higher than Ronald Reagan’s rating at the same point in his Administration. From that lofty pinnacle it might appear that being all things to all Americans is working: the President is said, for example, to cite polls at Cabinet meetings in order to silence opposition and make points.

All this is eerily reminiscent of one James Earl Carter of Plains, Georgia. Mr. Carter entered Washington as the reform-minded outsider, with the air of a man bent on chasing the moneychangers from the Temple. Cato has gone back and checked some of the figures, and has found that after the same period of time in office Mr. Carter enjoyed a 66 per cent approval rating: just short of Mr. Bush’s but a full six points higher than Mr. Reagan’s. He left Washington lower down on the approval scale than Richard Nixon ever was. By contrast Mr. Reagan took his lumps early on, and after dropping low during the recession built his popularity back on the basis of his principled confrontations. Even ending his eight years in office with Iran-Contra didn’t hurt him.