by Wayne Douma

Created on: August 27, 2009   Last Updated: August 30, 2009

Americans almost seem to be bipolar when it comes to the issue of politics. One minute they are in love with a smooth-talking, intelligent, and articulate candidate for President (coming into office with an approval rating in the 60's percent), and merely months later, they have turned on this man and dropped his approval to the mark of 41% currently. The man spoken of is of course, President Barack Obama.

In the 1980's Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency by an overwhelming large margin over his opponents (in both 1980 and 1984). These were record breaking, land-slide elections, that ushered in an era of conservatism to the White House. His Vice-President George HW Bush was elected President in 1988, and then the economy started going down and Democrat Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992.

Clinton enjoyed 8 years in office (the first 2 term Democrat President in 35 years), and then George W Bush a Republican, was elected President in 2000. Bush was not overly popular in his final years, but he did serve 8 years as President, and in 2008 Americans tired of Republican rule, selected Barack Obama to be their President.

The last paragraph shows just how much trouble Americans have making up their minds. It is for this reason that I argue America is not currently in a political mood shift. Americans have always been this way!

There are a few key areas to look at when it comes to political mood, but none of these are major shifts either.

- Black vote: The African-American vote has become a major base in electing Democrats to government positions. In 2008, 91% of the African-American vote went to Barack Obama. This would make one think that most African- Americans are liberal? The weird thing is that though African-American's vote for Democrats 90% of the time, many are very socially conservative.

This voting block is deeply religious in most cases, and as we saw in 2008; though record numbers of African Americans voted for Barack Obama as President, they also showed up in numbers that voted down California's controversial "Prop-8" which voted down gay marriage in the state. Polling shows that without the record number of blacks voting in the state of California the proposition would have passed.

- Conservative/Liberal: Polling data shows that 35% of Americans polled describe themselves as "conservative" while only 14% actually describe themselves as "liberal". (The rest of course would be independent and moderate in their political views). This shows

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