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Opinion: Barack Obama’s initial approval rating is highest since JFK

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Do we still like President Obama? After all, it’s been a whole week.

According to the latest Gallup poll, the answer is mostly yes.

The day after taking office, Obama had an approval rating of 69% -- the highest of any new president since John F. Kennedy, who entered with 72% national approval, Saturday’s poll results said.

While an impressive rating, Obama might be a bit disappointed to find out that he dropped 14% since the last poll a couple of weeks ago, when he had an astounding 82% approval.

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But since the latest poll, Obama has made some controversial decisions, such as announcing plans to close the prison at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, taking a firm stance for abortion rights and a suspected missile attack on Pakistan.

Such swift actions could end up swaying those 12%, who initially disapproved of the new president, or the 21%, with no opinion.

President Bush’s approval rating hit a low of 25% shortly before leaving office, then rebounded slightly to 34% by Jan. 20.

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It’s not clear whether Bush’s thrilling, ninja-like shoe dodge had any correlation with the poll upturn.

-- Mark Milian

The Ticket currently has an approval rating of 100% based on a poll of more than 2,000 Twitter subscribers. Show us your support by registering here for cellphone alerts on each new Ticket item. RSS feeds are also available here. And we’re on Amazon’s Kindle as well.

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