AND BEATIN' THEM FOREIGNERS, TOO – AT 1:18 P.M. ET:   The president is not only rising in polls here, he's beating the pants, or the burkas, off foreign leaders who look down their noses at him. From Fox:

President Trump routinely takes grief from the pundits for his underwater approval ratings – but compared with some of his embattled European counterparts, facing civil unrest in the streets and internal government tensions, the U.S. president is riding high.

While Trump’s approval ratings have hovered well below 50 percent ever since he took office, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Theresa May are nowhere close to that right now.

Macron’s political troubles were dramatically exposed over the last two weeks, as rioters burned cars and looted stores in response to his push for gas taxes to fight climate change.

On Tuesday, the widespread violence prompted Macron to delay the fuel tax by at least six months.
Amid the chaos, Macron's approval rating in France is just 23 percent, according to the latest poll from international polling company Ifop, as many on both the left and right see him as out-of-touch. That compares with a 47 percent approval rating for Trump in the most recent Fox News poll.

Macron once had a friendly relationship with Trump, but that relationship soured after the U.S. president spurned Macron's advice on climate change and relations with Iran. Macron then publicly jabbed at Trump – attacking the notion of nationalism after Trump embraced the term, as well as calling for the formation of a European army to protect Europe against China, Russia, and even the United States.

Trump responded by swiping at Macron's approval ratings.

"The problem is that Emmanuel suffers from a very low Approval Rating in France... he was just trying to get to another subject," Trump tweeted last month.

COMMENT:  If truth be told, a president's approval rating at this stage doesn't necessarily translate into the result of his run for re-election.  Predicting the future of presidential elections is a hazardous business.  President Bush 41, being memorialized as we write, saw a major plunge in his approval as his first term came into its last year.  There was no second term because he was defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992.  He was also hobbled by the presence of Ross Perot in the race, who took votes mostly from Bush.

And don't forget the famous 1936 poll that showed the Republicans beating Franklin D. Roosevelt.  FDR won his second term by a landslide.

Polls are fun, part of the game of politics.  They are not predictions.

December 5, 2018