Perception Is Reality

I used to spend a lot of time in Washington, D.C. when I was practicing as a tax attorney.

Many of those visits involved work on various tax legislative initiatives.

I often worked with a lobbyist who had been a high level legislative staffer before getting into lobbying.

He often said this about understanding how things work in D.C.

"Perception is reality" he would repeat over and over.

He believed that nothing mattered more than perception.

Perception was more important than facts, truth or anything else.

That is a big reason media narratives are so important when it comes to most major political issues.

Media narratives shape the perception of the public.

Those perceptions then become the reality that shapes the political response from those in D.C.

I often focus this blog on facts and data that counter media narratives.

Providing context and the truth and reality around issues.

However, I also pay close attention to polls and surveys that measure perceptions and sentiments based on what my former colleague said about Washington.

In that perceptions are so important to politics you can't afford to ignore those perceptions.

Let's take a look at a recent NBC News poll to see the approval ratings of various people and groups.

Clearly, it is tough for anyone or any thing to get positive net approval from voters in any poll these days.

That is particularly true for any politician.

The only positive approvals scores in the NBC News polls were for the Pope and a comedian.

Source: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/27777984-nbc-news-march-2026-poll-03-08-2024-release-final/

Every politician and political party was in negative territory.

The Democrat Party is -22 compared to -14 for the Republican Party.

Only Iran polls worse than Democrats right now.

The two biggest names being promoted for 2028 for the Democrat Presidential election are Kamala Harris at -17 and Gavin Newsom at -18.

Compare that to the two Republican frontrunners that are mentioned the most---Marco Rubio -7 and J.D. Vance -11. 

President Trump is at -12 in the NBC poll despite a media narrative that is almost constantly negative.

In the Real Clear Politics composite average of all polls Trump is -10.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating

Let's compare Trump's -10 to previous President's to the first week of March of their second term (only term for Biden).

Biden         -14

Obama       -10

Bush II       -12

Trump's approval is right in line with Obama's and better than Biden or Bush at the same time.

Who would have thought that if you watched NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN or MSNOW every night?

In his first term, Trump was -14 this same week.

It will be interesting to see what Trump's approval in the days and weeks ahead with the Iran situation being so fluid.

Is the U.S. achieving its objectives?

Will Iran create more chaos in the region?

Where are oil prices headed?

If we are looking at $5 gas prices it will not be good.

On the other hand, if Iran is under control, we may see exactly the opposite.

Perception will be reality either way, especially in the short term.

However, Trump did not do any of this except with the long term in mind.

The actual reality of what eventually develops will be what is recorded in the history books.

Today's perceptions will fade from memory.

A lot of times current perceptions do not make any sense.

For example, compare the views on sanctuary cities and those on ICE.

43% of those polled do not approve of sanctuary cities compared to only 33% who approve.

Those numbers would indicate that people do not want cities protecting criminal aliens from deportation.

However, by a 56%-36% score, those polled have a negative view of ICE who is charged with enforcing the immigration laws.

You can be sure that the views on ICE have been heavily influenced by a negative media narrative.

However, perception is reality.

Most surprising to me in the poll was the high negative feelings about Artificial Intelligence at -20.

The only things that polled worse were Iran and the Democrat Party.

Keep your eye on this issue as we head towards 2028.

Will we see politicians taking stands to rein in AI as more stories like this appear?

One thing you can count on is people reacting to threats to their livelihood and way of life.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/28/tech/amazon-layoffs-ai

Source: https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/oracle-expected-slash-thousands-jobs-massive-ai-spending-creates-financial-cash-crisis

I have said before that it remains to be seen whether AI will be one of mankind's greatest innovations or our final undoing.

I am an optimist so I am inclined to believe the former.

However, that does not mean there will not be challenges, pain and economic dislocations along the way.

A lot of whale oil distributors went out of business when electricity starting lighting cities.

Self-dialed phones meant a lot of telephone operations lost their jobs.

So did a lot of secretaries when word processors or encyclopedia salesmen when Google was developed.

However, perception is reality in the short term.

Truth is revealed in the long term.

The problem is that most political decisions are made in the short term based on perceptions.

Trump is not a politician as if any of us need to be reminded of that fact.