The Keyes to Understanding
George Bush’s popularity is now at the Margin of Crazification discussed on Kung Fu Monkey back in 2005 and again early this year:
John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is –
Tyrone: 27%.
John: … you said that immediately, and with some authority.
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgment. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That’s crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
Via comments at OTB. Theoretically, Bush cannot get less popular than this.
UPDATE: Should clarify that Bush is not at 37% currently – it’s an old dialog. Bush is at the Keyes margin.
Comment by Jon H —
May 31, 2007 @ 8:49 pm
May I suggest it be called the “Keyes Horizon”?
More dramatic, because it suggests the mystery in what might happen if we go past it.
I just hope we won’t find political tidal forces tearing the nation apart.
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 31, 2007 @ 8:59 pm
So let it be written. So let it be done.
Comment by Jim Kakalios —
May 31, 2007 @ 9:11 pm
Well, any number beneath 27% is thus “below Absolute zero”. Now, such a situation can occur, but only in non-equilibrium systems and it is intrinsically unstable. [insert joke here].
Comment by Thoreau —
May 31, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
This 27% level shall be called the Kung Fu Monkey Carnot limit, in honor of the limits to efficiency in thermodynamics.
Since any support for Bush presumably reflects an inefficiency in the marketplace of ideas, this 27% limit would be one minus the Carnot efficiency of the marketplace of ideas, or 1-(1-T1/T2) = T1/T2, i.e. a ratio of temperatures.
Bush’s support will only go to zero when even the crazies see the light, i.e. when Hell freezes over. So T1 must be the temperature of Hell, and hence Bush’s support is proportional to the level of activity in Hell. Which makes a lot of sense, when you think about it.
T2 must be proportional to the temperature of something even hotter than hell. Since there has been considerable discussion of how the light of God being like a thousand suns implies a temperature greater than Hell’s (which is merely molten brimstone), we therefore conclude that Bush’s support is directly proportional to the average kinetic energy of a demon in hell and inversely proportional to the average kinetic energy of an angel in heaven.
The good news is that since Bush’s support can’t top 100%, this means that heaven must always be more active than hell. So there’s some hope for the world.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
May 31, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
FWIW, Truman bottomed out at 22%.
Comment by sean —
May 31, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
People have talked for years about how we need another Truman. I guess they got what they wanted.
Comment by Jon H —
May 31, 2007 @ 10:37 pm
I think below 22% and any activity you’re seeing is just Brownian noise.
But is there a Bose-Einstein condensate state of politics, and how will we know if Bush reaches that point?
Comment by brucedene —
June 1, 2007 @ 12:44 am
Thoreau, you just made me a better person.
Comment by moonbiter —
June 1, 2007 @ 2:36 am
Doesn’t Dick Cheney have a lower favorability rating? I thought he was tracking about 4-8 points below Bush.
Comment by Tequila —
June 1, 2007 @ 5:13 am
Ehud Olmert has something like a 2% approval rating in Israel. I think even Robert Mugabe probably has a higher genuine approval rating than that.
Comment by dsquared —
June 1, 2007 @ 6:09 am
Mugabe’s genuine approval rating is actually quite high, because he is popular with rural people who don’t get much news. Also Zimbabwe was a one-party state between 1988 and 1999 so the actual membership of ZANU-PF is a material proportion of the country. A lot of mistakes are made about Zimbabwe by Western journalists who assume that Mugabe is as unpopular with everyone as he is in the cities.
Comment by Nell —
June 1, 2007 @ 7:08 am
Cheney hits 19% in some polls. You could say that he’s been edging below the Truman-Keyes Horizon for a while.
The scientific metaphor that the VP evokes for me is ‘dark matter’, but I wouldn’t dare try to take that any further — though on the basis of #4 above I’d be delighted to see Thoreau do so…
Comment by Fledermaus —
June 1, 2007 @ 10:45 am
FWIW, Truman bottomed out at 22%.
Well we did have a lot fewer crazy people back then. As it stands now the US has been big cock on the block for so long we’ve gotten fat and stupid.
Comment by Lars —
June 1, 2007 @ 12:21 pm
I think you guys are incorrectly assuming Truman’s support comes from the crazy people (rather than the crazies constituting part of the other 78%).
Comment by yave begnet —
June 1, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
The immigration issue could push him below the 27% floor, as there’s nothing the base hates more than “amnesty”.