And here's the Good News

I'm not the only one noticing pointless ratings statistics. So is Power Line:

The conventional wisdom is that President Bush is in the doghouse with the American people, his poll ratings plummeting farther every time they are reported. However, some of those polls, like this one by CBS, seem designed to generate those very headlines. To get any reliable sense of the trend, you almost have to follow a poll that is done on a consistent basis. One of the best of such polls is Scott Rasmussen's. Rasmussen shows President Bush climbing from his low point in October, to a current approval rating of 46%. That's his best this month, and, as Rasmussen says, it might be statistical noise. If it's for real, it's good news; 46% isn't great, but it's well out of the sub-40% danger territory. But, in any event, the upward trend since last month is good news for Republicans.