Pretty much on queue, stories about President Obama losing popularity begin to emerge. In short, the honeymoon’s just about over.
Of course, the President’s approval ratings are still impressively high. But all things considered, it’s simply not normal for a President–any President–to stay wildly popular forever. Odds are good that sooner or later this President’s approval ratings will dip below 50%, especially if most people continue to think the country is on the wrong track. His opponents will undoubtedly crow when those approval ratings dip below 50%, but then have little to say when they go up above 50% again (which they probably will now and again).
Although I love politics, polls like this get annoying after a while. Big shock, six months after the election and people are beginning to rate Obama based on how they perceive the country as going rather than based on his remarkable personal story. We didn’t see this coming?
My own suspicion is that just like all Presidents, it’s going to be hard to say much about his Presidency until after it’s over. But no one’s got the patience for that I guess. 
{ 22 comments }
Who cares about his “remarkable personal story”? He’s taken direct action as President that has damaged the economy (the GM screw over of investors which will make future investors in the American economy gun shy, for example). True, most Presidents have very little influence on the economy but this one has had real effect and it has been near uniformly negative.
Dean
Obama was never a typical candidate or president. The man was deified by the press and his other supporters, and last year’s election was made out to be an event akin to the Second Coming.
Now it turns out that the god has feet of clay? As one of his detractors from the beginning it’s no big deal to me. However those who truly believed Obama was indeed different are going to be really disheartened by his failure to change everything they think is wrong with America. There’s going to be some serious freaking out by his supporters over the next few years.
Mike: I think it’s always a good thing when the President is an inspiring figure. I’m quite fine with children getting the message that it really is true that anyone can grow up to be President. I think it’s a fine thing when people come up not just from whatever racial background, but whatever socioeconomic background too. On the polar opposite side politically, for example, Ronald Reagan grew up dirt poor, the son of an itinerant salesman who was also an alcoholic who never really recovered, worked his own way through college and not a particularly fancy one either, and worked his way all the way up through the bottom rungs of Hollywood and then on into the Governor of California then President. What’s wrong with that story? Nothing. Nothing at all. It’s a great thing that says great things about America.
It’s great that in America the illegitimate son of an African immigrant, growing up mix-race in a time when that wasn’t all that well accepted, could go on through hard work to get into some of the best schools in the nation, run for President and win. Why wouldn’t you be proud of that as an American? How couldn’t you be?
Disagree with the President’s choices all you want. Time will tell whether your disagreement is exactly right, if it’s totally overblown, or somewhere in between, but other Presidents have done things bigger and more dramatic, so let’s just wait and see.
In any case, my only point went to the fact that it should not be particularly surprising if the President’s numbers are slipping. It was normal, natural, and to be expected. It would be weird if it wasn’t happening.
Scott: Well as it happens I completely agree that Obama is just another politician and was doomed to disappoint those who fervently believed he’d be different. He isn’t. But then, I think “politician,” for all the kicking around we give it, is actually a noble profession, warts and all.
As I say, my point was, there is nothing significant about a President’s poll numbers fluctuating and doing a slide a few months after they take office and begin to govern for real. It has no huge significance one way or the other–it’s just to be expected.
Dean:
OK, it’s probably fair to wait until Obama’s Presidency is “over” to make a final judgement.
At this moment, that would appear to me to be happening right around August 31.
We’ll check back then and see how he did.
I think that when we are in good or even mediocre economic times a President’s path to office can be a source of inspiration. But when we are in horrible economic times like these (Michigan is above 15% unemployment, 10 states report unemployment in the double digits) I think you have to put aside lionizing of the President and get down to brass tacks.
When the plane is flying right it might be good to talk about how the pilot was born poor and illegitimate, got himself sponsored to the Air Force Academy and made Lt. Colonel before anyone in the history of the service. When the plane is diving into a crash due in large part to the actions of the pilot it’s time to stop thinking so good of him and just say “what the HELL are you going to do to get us out of this mess?”
That’s all fair so far as I can see, Mike.
And, it’s also pretty inevitable. Even if times weren’t tough. Any President is going to make calls that are unpopular, and is also going to make mistakes, and is also going to be blamed for things he can’t be blamed for–by which I do not mean Obama can’t be blamed for anything, but I mean, it’s GOING to happen, to him just like every President, that there are things he catches flack for he can’t even reasonably be expected to control.
Anyway, given his economic rhetoric, it’s fair to go after the President on his economic policies. Long term, we’ll see how much of a success or failure they really are, but if you campaign saying everything’s been screwed up by your predecessors, then, you’re surely fair game to be asked if you aren’t screwing up yourself. [shrug] Really none of this was my point; my point is that it’s simply to be expected that a new President’s honeymoon is going to end sooner or later. It’s just the normal course of events.
Dean,
You don’t need to believe this guy, but you do need to wake up.
Obama is not MLK Jr nor is he the next saint black presidential wonderman of America that crawled up from the ranks of the poor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hFiab7fjak
I wasn’t aware that I had suggested he was a saint. Indeed, I believe I suggested, as I always have, that he’s just another politician, no less and no more.
His rise from illegitimate muti-ethnic middle class child to Ivy League educated lawyer, state politician, US Senator, and President of the United States is inspiring.
And he gives great speeches.
That’s enough to give him great approval numbers for a few months.
But he never held a leadership position in his life, and now that lack of experience is obvious for all to see. I think his numbers will drop like a rock the next few months.
But I also think he’s got another 8-12 months to demonstrate he’s a quick learner, and use his OJT experience to turn things around.
Otherwise, I think he’s doomed to a Jimmy Carter or, God forbid, James Buchanan like legacy.
Dean, you’re right in an absolute sense, but no government in the history of the Earth that has attempted such massive things with so little payoff and so little prospect of finding the resources to pay for them has ever been successful. Obama is running up a deficit comparable to the last years of WWII – and, unlike then, the world is *not* destroyed and won’t give us a generation to pay for it.
The sad thing is he *does* have a compelling story. I just wish he was more Calvin Coolidge and less Jimmy Carter meets FDR with a bit of Hugo Chavez tossed in.
As long as people think supporting him gives them political correctness credibility and as long as he continues to lie about everything he’s done and is going to do, his numbers will remain respectable. The only thing that would change that is for the press to actually report on his actual progress and compare his actual promises to what he actually delivers.
But there’s not much chance of that happening for a good while yet. He will be one of, if not the first, President to have high approval ratings while his political agenda is torn to ragged pieces and Congress squabbles over the bits and pieces they think are still salvageable.
I hope you’re wrong about people excusing his incompetence and savaging of the economy, CC. I really hope people wake up soon and realize that even though he is black he deserves harsh criticism. If, as you spell out, political correctness causes people to go along with the destruction of the economy when he finally leaves office the damage won’t be blamed on “Obama: the man” but “Obama: the Black man” and that will set this country back generations in race relations.
Mike:
Well, I, for one, won’t be blaming it on “Obama: the Black man” although I will put a good deal of the blame on “Citizen: I voted for the black man because it made me feel good about myself.” Or “Citizen: I voted for Hope and Change because I think that’s a real political agenda.” Or “Citizen: I voted for the anyone but Bush party” etc…
Have to echo the first commenter – His “remarkable personal story” ???
Since when does that – really – have squat to do with his approval rating ? His approval rating, including the 54% or so that got him elected, was based on the mainstream media narrative and Obama’s own misleading nonsense that he would be moderate and a centrist. He is enacting the plan he and the left have been drooling over for decades. People that were paying attention knew this was coming. Perhaps the biggest lie of all was told during one of the debates when asked what part of his agenda would be set aside because of the economic crisis. Obama never really gave an answer but insinuated that, indeed, some things would have to wait – OR in actuality, instead of reducing the agenda, the economic crisis would be great OPPORTUNITY to triple the agenda and try and ramrod through every POS legislation possible.
The real story here is that people are actually catching on to the plan – massive government expansion and ridiculous deficit spending that will ultimately require the inevitable tax increases on FAR more of Americans than just those making more than $250K. Which is to say nothing of the similar effects of inflation due to Cap and Trade, Health Care Reform, and the gargantuan deficit. Well, IF the first two actually get passed, which seems about 50-50 right now.
People generally vote as much for the feeling they get for a man’s character as anything else. On the whole, I think this has pretty much served us well over the last couple of hundred years, and is arguably the more rational way to make a choice: the reality of a President’s job is that his character often matters more than his policy positions.
I’ve said all this for years, by the way.
As for whether his character is really one of constant deception and gross incompetence that all the smart people are finally starting to see through: we’ll see.
Rasmussen has him at 51-49 today.
But its considerably worse than that, because he’s down -7 in the “strongly” category. That means people would pay money, organize voters, etc, to see him kicked out of office. These numbers are big trouble for an incumbent.
And it’s going to get worse. There’s still a good chunk of campaign lies that haven’t been demonstrated as such yet. When people start actually seeing his policies destroying their health care and the economy in general, he might end up in the 20s.
Well, since there’s still at least 30% of the nation that shares his Leftist ideology, I doubt he’ll get into the 20s unless things get so bad that people start changing their ideology. Which could happen, but so long as people can rationalize their situation with a combination of “it’s not really that bad” and “It’s really all Bush’s fault” then he’ll continue to get graded on a curve.
Probably the best thing that could happen to Obama in terms of his popularity is for his major initiatives to fail.
Cosmic & Dave: What most Presidents do in this situation, in the modern era, is tack to the other side, pissing off much of their base by giving “the other side” some of what they want, or even a substantial amount.
This will lower his popularity with his own base, but will mollify some on the other side. Those who can be mollified, that is.
There’s a vague thought that has been circualting in my mid-brain for a while. I listen to talk radio sometimes, and have the distinct impression that minorities identify so strongly with Obama that they don’t seem to be able to separate him from the consequences of his actions; some of them may carry the conviciton that the bad stuff happening to rich people is fair turnaround, and if bad stuff happens to them too it’s only because the rich folk are so bad as to redirect consequences that the rich merit to the poor deserving working class.
There is a strong potential that Obama may in fact end up driving a wedge between white and black America because black America is not able to see criticism of his policies as anything other than racist, and by extension a direct attack on them personally. There is a less strong potential that white America will see the black response as stupid, racist, and reinforcement of a stereotype. {I think less strong because there is a well established precedence in the black Americans as a whole committment to the Democratic party that nets them little or nothing.}
I didn’t vote for him for president when he was Senator Wonderful. His dreams and aspirations are not mine. Now his reputation and general standing among the electorate is floating back down here to hell on Earth. If his numbers keep plummeting, he may well be the first one-termer since the detestable but otherwise unremarkable James Earl Carter. Meantime, none of his programs appear to be going anywhere.
And the only people who swoon over him are the Arabs of Ramallah, who imagine he will put enough pressure on the Israelis to cause them to evacuate Judea, Samaria, Golan and even eastern Jerusalem in terror over the thunder from the godhead in the White House.
(Dream on, Fatah. There are more than a half-million Israelis already resident in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. Their numbers will be augmented each year,irrespective of this particular turkey in the White House. You are destined at best to be Arab suburbs of the great Jewish cities of Israel. That’s if you behave. If not, the concrete barriers will stay up. And if you misbehave in spades, like your cousins in Gaza, you will get the same treatment they got recently, Barack Hussein Obama notwithstanding.)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
He’s a fad. Note that none of the things that Dean described him as actually have anything to do with, you know, leading a country.
Like all fads, his run is about over. Michael Jackson is the popular guy now (he can’t do anything to sabotage his own fame now) . Obama was last summer’s fad. It’s time for a new fad now, which means Obama will start to be judged on his merits. Unfortunately for him and America, those are few and far between.
It’s electric!
The Obama slide….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAwpTva9ERk
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