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Peak Obama
When presidents hit the mid-points of their last terms in office, they get obsessed by legacy issues. How will history remember me? is what they think about. It’s only natural: publishers start approaching about the Big Book they’re all going to write, it’s time to raise money for the presidential library, they can feel the center of political gravity start to shift away from them and towards the Next Thing.
Some of them — and I’m talking to you, Mr. President — might look at their sagging approval numbers and think, well, these will get better, right?
For Obama, the news is bad. From Politico:
The norm since World War II is for presidents to score their highest job approval ratings in their first term, then slump dramatically in their second. From Harry Truman immediately after World War II to George W. Bush in the opening years of the 21st century, this has been the trend in the Gallup poll, the long-running chronicler of presidential job approval ratings: In numerical terms, the 11 presidents from Truman to Bush II entered office with an average job approval rating of 65 percent and left with an average of 48 percent.
In other words, it’s probably not going to get better for Obama. Unless lightning strikes:
Who knows—the economy could take off again, boosting Obama along with it. The Republicans could overreach on some matter of major import. Or a sudden “rally around the president” event, such as (God forbid) a major terrorist attack, could propel the president’s approval rating dramatically upward.
None of those things — save a Republican blunder — seems likely. The economy seems to be sputtering along. And any major terrorist attack is more likely to be blamed on President Obama rather than increase his support.
More than likely, then, is a peculiar twist on this most peculiar presidency: Barack Obama, like his fraternal twin Richard Nixon, is about to go down in history as a disliked, unpopular, but nevertheless two-term president.
Published in General
I shook my head at Obama’s 2008 election, but I kinda sorta understood it. Nevertheless, after watching the economy drift while Obama busied himself with ideological fantasies, I hoped we’d be rid of him in 2012. Not so. In the end, his two terms will go down as eight of worst American years of unforced errors in our history. Anybody else feel as if he or she has been drifting out at sea on a raft with no rescue in sight?
“In other words, it’s probably not going to get better for Obama. Unless lightning strikes”
And this differs from W, how?
This “lightning” you speak of will be a carefully contrived event not unlike what is currently going down on our southern border. My guess for what it’s worth: Obama’s second term ends in a constitutional crisis.
Nixon was elected twice, true, but I don’t think he qualifies as a two-term president!
I hope you’re right, Rob, but I have my doubts. I always thought Bill Clinton’s popularity was a bubble that would pop, but it never did. He’s still popular. Really, aside from Anthony Weiner, has any Democrat recently gone into “generally unliked” territory? Is there any Democrat that people don’t want to be seen with?
Overturn Obamacare and he’s got no legacy at all. It’s all negative. Economically, forein policy, domestic agenda. Once he’s out of office I’m sure his populatity will go up, perhaps even skyrocket. He’s the perfect inane Liberal the media loves, and there will never be a negative article on him or his legacy. But legacy has nothing to do with popularity. The facts are the facts and he’s a zippo, nothing.
Obama thinks he is too good for his office. And he has nowhere to go from there anyway. He is too hip for the room, with the room being the whole world. It wouldn’t surprise me if he arranged his own assassination and trumped it up to look like tea party racists did it. That would be a lasting historical legacy. That’s the only way he could really be mentioned in the same breath as Lincoln or MLK.
Let’s not forget that the only reason he’s a two term president is because he blatantly lied to the American people about the ACA. “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period.” Had Obama been a president of pallor with a media pack acting like the watchdogs they were meant to be he would have been impeached and convicted months ago.
Obama is dead weight in his own party. They can’t wait to be rid of him. He’s more Carter than Clinton.
Can’t wait to read The Audacity of Retirement.
“…his fraternal twin Richard Nixon,…”
This is such a true thing Rob. Only Nixon managed to triangulate red China and the Soviet Union. Obama won’t even have that. All he will have is the destruction of the economy and the record of the most corrupt and pernicious administration in American history.
ps – The quote function sucks eggs. I’m having to use quotation marks like some dang cave man.