Wish Obama Was Still President? Polls Show You're Not Alone

With every early morning tweet about North Korea, every new scoop related to the Russia scandal and every businessman who gets hired (then fired) from the White House, Barack Obama looks just a little bit better than President Donald Trump.

Fifty-two percent of respondents to a Public Policy Polling survey released Thursday said they wished Obama was still leading the U.S., compared to 41 percent who said they preferred having Trump in office. The Obama fandom was dominated by voters who supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, but they weren't alone.

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Some 7 percent of Trump voters—and 14 percent of self-identified Republicans—also chose Obama over the current commander in chief.

The Obama nostalgia is real, especially because Trump's approval ratings are so low—about 39 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight. The poll was also full of Trump criticisms: 54 percent of people said he was dishonest, 47 percent said he was mentally unstable and 48 percent said he should be impeached.

"We're really not seeing any path to Donald Trump achieving a positive approval rating," the polling group's president, Dean Debnam, said in a news release. "Voters are unhappy with him about a lot of ongoing issues, and new ones seem to creep up in our polling every month as well."

Fondness for former presidents is nothing new. As Gallup pointed out, in March 2009 only about 35 percent of people said they liked George W. Bush. But now that some time has passed since his term finished, and he's become a painter, his approval rating has hit 59 percent.

In addition to being Trump's near-perfect foil, Obama has done a number of adorable dad things recently. On Monday, for example, the former president admitted that he cried while dropping off his daughter Malia at Harvard University earlier this year. He described the experience as "a little bit like open-heart surgery," according to USA Today.

"On the way back, the Secret Service was off, looking straight ahead, pretending they weren't hearing me as I sniffled and blew my nose," he added. "It was rough."

Then, on Thursday, Obama indulged in one of his favorite old-man pastimes and attended The Presidents Cup golf tournament in New Jersey. Clad in a polo shirt and khakis, he posed for several selfies alongside similarly well-rested-looking Bush and Bill Clinton.

The poll included responses from about 900 voters collected between last Friday and Monday. Its margin of error was plus/minus about 3 percentage points.