Vets Less Likely to Approve of Job Obama's Doing

President Obama made a visit to Arlington National Cemetery today, where he placed a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns, reports the AP. "Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay, but we can honor their sacrifice," he said at a Memorial Day service there. "And we must." But in other troop-centric Memorial Day news, Gallup reports that veterans and active-duty military personnel are less likely to approve of the job Obama is doing than similar age, non-military Americans.

Using data from 238,000 interviews conducted between January 2010 and April 2011, Gallup found that 37% of veterans and those on active duty gave Obama's performance a thumbs up, compared to 48% of nonmilitary responders. But it turns out active-duty personnel aren't much more likely to disapprove. Instead, they're more likely to say they have no opinion, by as many as 11 percentage points. Gallup speculates that could be because they are "adhering to a general nonpartisan norm within the military culture, and are therefore less willing to express an opinion." (More Barack Obama stories.)