MISS BUSH YET? NO, NOT REALLY

At the Daily Beast a couple of days ago, Mark MacKinnon and Myra Adams wrote:

Will Bush Be the Next Truman?

... Truman holds the dubious distinction of achieving the lowest in-office job approval of 22 percent, edging out Nixon at 24 percent and Bush at 25 percent.

And yet, time and history have been kind to Truman....

It’s too early to tell how Bush will be judged 50 years from today and whether he'll fare as well as Truman....

And Public Policy Polling, which is a Democratic-leaning firm but often generates results that skew right (like it's conclusion that Doug Hoffman would win by 16 points), tells us that Americans are evenly split on whether they'd rather have Bush or Obama as president.

So, do we really miss Bush yet?

Well, let's look at one set of numbers in that new New York Times/CBS poll.

17. Who do you think is mostly to blame for the current state of the nation's economy — 1. the Bush administration, 2. the Obama administration, 3. Wall Street and financial institutions, 4. Congress, or 5. someone else?

Bush administration 32%
Obama administration 4%
Wall Street and financial institutions 22%
Congress 10%
Someone else 7%
All of the above (vol.) 9%
Combination (vol.) 13%
DK/NA 2%

By the way, even though Obama's other poll numbers have gone down, those numbers have barely budged since last April. (Then it was Bush 33%, Obama 2%.)

...Oh, there's an exception to this. Among tea party supporters, only 5% blame the Bush administration. (Obama gets 10% blame, Congress 28%.)

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UPDATE: How credible is the work of Public Policy Polling? Today it publishes a poll showing Barack Obama beating Sarah Palin in a presidential matchup 47%-45%. Sarah Palin at 45%? Really? Excuse me, but only 40% of teabaggers think she's qualified to be president, according to the Times/CBS poll. She has absolutely abysmal numbers in every other poll conducted this year. Sorry, PPP -- not credible. At all.