This infographic from the Pew Research Center shows the approval ratings by party for every president since Eisenhower, and interestingly, though not surprisingly, Donald Trump garnered the most polarized partisan response of any president since they started collecting data (link: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/08/24/trumps-approval-ratings-so-far-are-unusually-stable-and-deeply-partisan/).

I'm not the first to make this speculation, but this divide seems most likely a consequence of the increasingly fragmented, biased, and agenda-driven news media. Even as recently as during the presidency of George W. Bush, self-described conservatives, including ones who had fervently supported the president, didn't hesitate to distance themselves from the president and express their discontent over perceptions of his competence and honesty after the Duelfer Report was released in October 2004, dispelling any credence in the theory of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which served as the chief basis for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Based on the same infographic linked above, it appears that Republican approval of our 43rd president reached a nadir at the end of his second term, at approximately 63%. In contrast, Republican approval ratings of Trump held steady at about 87%, and resisted any fluctuation in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Although I generally support Democratic politicians in the United States, I am no blind partisan, and don't hesitate to call out poor performance, dishonesty, or corruption in any politician. If voters let their partisanship overpower their perceptions, then on what basis can we judge the merit of an individual? Party affiliation shouldn't provide permanent immunity from clear-eyed examination of a U.S. president. We can reverse this trend of blind, partisan adoration of American public leaders, because evidently it is a fairly recent development.