FF enters Calamity Kim territory as Greens sink to the margin of error

THE present state of disillusionment with politics is the worst I have witnessed. In this week’s public opinion poll, the Government satisfaction rating was a mere 12%, which is the lowest I can remember in any democracy.

That includes the US in the 1960s and 1970s during the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal. At the height of Watergate, when Richard Nixon was forced to resign from the White House in disgrace, his approval rating was 24%, which is 7% higher than Brian Cowen’s current rating.

Of course, it should be noted that the US president with the worst approval rating of all was Harry Truman, who plummeted to 22% during the Korean war. But historians now regard him as one of his country’s finest presidents.