Gallup: On ethical standards, Obama worse off than Bush & Clinton

The percentage of Americans who believe President Barack Obama’s administration has poor ethical standards is higher than that measured by Gallup at various points during presidencies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, a new poll finds.

Thirty-two percent of those surveyed said top Obama officials have “poor” ethics, according to a Gallup poll on Friday. This compares with figures of 29 percent for George W. Bush, 21 percent for Bill Clinton, 7 percent for George H.W. Bush, and 15 percent for Ronald Reagan, pollsters said.

Ethical standards were rated on a four-step scale - “excellent,” “good,” “not good,” and “poor.”

“The 32% specifically calling administration officials’ ethical standards poor is higher than Gallup found toward top officials in former President George W. Bush’s administration between 2002 and 2005, as well as in Bill Clinton’s administration in 1994,” Gallup said.

“Differences in survey methodology in terms of question order could mean the results may not be entirely comparable from one survey to the next. Nevertheless, even taken by themselves, the current results are not optimal for an administration that has prided itself on having put in place ‘the toughest ethics laws and toughest transparency rules of any administration in history’,” Gallup added.

Gallup also included data on its website showing the number who rated the ethics as “poor” during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations in 1983, 1984 and 1989 were lower than the current Obama figure. (Continues with more bad news for Obama)