Michael Medved looks at polls and claims Americans are confused when really it's just he who is confused.

In a USA Today piece, the sub-heading asserts, "America’s public gloom contradicts people’s enduring, if private, confidence," with Medved stating, "It's no wonder that Americans feel so deeply disconnected from their elected leaders when their contradictory opinions show them similarly out of touch with themselves."

He can't fathom how Americans can be both disenchanted with Bush and Congress and yet also be very satisfied with their own lives. Medved regards these seemingly befuddling outcomes as "laughably inconsistent." Not really, which I'll soon illustrate, but likely what's going on here is Medved approaches this entire exercise with a preconceived agenda, desperately wanting to prove a larger point (that Americans really don't dislike Bush and what he's done) and he does so by adopting a confined, black-and-white view that he's determined to prove holds true.

To shed some light, let me just answer some poll-like questions and see what we have.

Am I basically satisfied or even happy with my life? Yes.

Do I disapprove of Bush? Yes.

Do I disapprove of the way Congress is handling national affairs? Given this question typically refers to the Iraq war, and the Republicans continue to support Bush's misguided urgings and the Dems have not stood up to Bush (in large part the reason for their November election wins), then yes, I disapprove.

So where's the lie or "laughable inconsistency"? There's nothing incongruent in the above, with the answers to each question being perfectly reasonable when viewed collectively. I can be satisfied or happy in my personal life and yet not approve of the President, elected representatives, or the general state of the country. It's laughable to believe that people can't have the above opinions. To some extent, is this the right-wing once again making clear how they view people, that they must be two-dimensional, robot-like lemmings as opposed to complex, nuanced, and at the same time consistent?

I suppose when Bill Clinton was in office Medved was not pleased with this fact and was likely not pleased with the direction of the country, and thus must have been miserable in his personal life -- for eight years. Uh, okay.

Medved is just trying to spin negatives into positives. A tiny bit of me feels for him since Bush's job approval rating just hit a new low at 24% -- the same figure Nixon had when he left office. Ouch.