Why Isn’t Obama Doing Better?
Watching the President on 60 Minutes raises wonder at why more Americans aren’t rallying around this highly intelligent, energetic, fair-minded man.
The answer may be in the question itself. Contrasting Barack Obama’s demeanor with the rage and unearned self-regard of his would-be successors, Congressional critics and Murdoch media attack dogs—-and his low-key response to that rabid criticism–may tell us as much about low approval ratings as his own performance.
Informed of a new poll showing that “People like you. They respect you. They think that you’re working hard. And they realize that you faced an enormous amount of trouble and problems, many of them inherited. And you’re approval rating is four times higher than the Congress,” the President responds wryly, “That’s a low bar.”
Then the bad news: “But they’re not happy with the way you’re doing your job. You’ve got 75 percent of the people in the country think it’s headed in the wrong direction. Seventy-five percent. And 54 percent don’t think that you deserve to be re-elected.”
Most politicians would respond defensively, but this President coolly observes, “We’ve gone through an incredibly difficult time in this country. And I would be surprised if the American people felt satisfied right now. They shouldn’t feel satisfied. We’ve got a lot more work to do in order to get this country and the economy moving in a way that benefits everybody, as opposed to just a few.”
Even as he goes on the attack against Congressional stonewalling, Barack Obama is trapped not only by his even temperament but the reality that a 2012 opponent is still unchosen and that GOP debates demonizing him will go on for months to come.
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20 Responses to “Why Isn’t Obama Doing Better?”
Early days. He’s got a lot more to worry about right now than the revolving carousel of Republican candidates. When/if a serious Republican is nominated, I suspect more attention will be focused on the election. Only politophiles are interested right now. And we’re getting fatigued with Gingrich & Romney stories.
That’s what happens when a responsible adult is in the White House – he governs – or tries to.
“And 54 percent don’t think that you deserve to be re-elected.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean 54 percent won’t vote for him, especially given the dreadful alternatives. Stein raises legitimate questions though, and they go directly to the state of the electorate’s critical thinking ability – which is something we are already (unfortunately) all too well acquainted with
“You’ve got 75 percent of the people in the country think it’s headed in the wrong direction.”
Leadership can be positive or negative. Where Ronald Reagan used positive leadership as supported by his “Its Morning in America” 1984 campaign ad, Obama has used negative leadership by dividing this country between the classes. RR had the country beleiving it was going the right way. BO now has the country believing it is going in the wrong way.
Those of us who have ever worked in an environment where there are employees with negative attitudes understand negative leadership and negative feelings of a few promote negative attitudes of many who come in contact with this behavior. And this is what we see today in this country with all the talk of the 1% and 99%.
Someone like RR needs to bring the two sides together and work out solutions. Right now there is no one in sight that has this leadership quality that is interested in the Presidency.
IMO, Expectations were too high and the country was mired in an almost hopeless morass when he took office. People were/are unrealistic about what could be achieved and wanted to hold him to every campaign promise– without realizing that the opposition candidates would do so much less for the causes they cared about.
Obama was much better as an orator than at actually governing– his temperament is measured and reasonable –but I don’t think he’s suited to work with the nutcases that the Tea Party sent to Washington or to combat the nastiness that comes out of attack talk radio and from Fox commentators. He wants to reach a consensus with folks who have an anathema to consensus and compromise. Uber-partisanship is as big a problem in DC as the economy,or inequality, or the terrorist threat, and there are too many forces out there ready to stir it up at the least little thing. In that respect,
Hillary Clinton was right–and I believe would have been more effective at governing.
Obama is just the right leader for the wrong time.
I think his goal of bringing the country together as Americans to face our problems was the ideal thing to aspire to– but it may be impossible with all the nay-sayers out there that have a stake in his ultimate failure.
Maybe a majority of the country thinks he’s headed in the wrong direction- but 91% think that Congress is doing a terrible job. What has Congress been doing besides blocking all of Obama’s appointments and initiatives regardless of his willingness to compromise.
“Obama has used negative leadership by dividing this country between the classes.”
Not sure if you’re a youngster, haven’t been paying attention, or are just being disingenuous, but this country was divided long, long before O arrived on the scene. He’s certainly been less polarizing than our last few presidents (discounting reactions based on racial bias). In otherwords, you’re wrong.
Obama has had nothing but fire and brimstone poured on his head since the day he took office, generally even much earlier than that. There has been not one day of letup of truckloads of sh*t poured out at a continual rate from the right-leaners, and more recently from way out there in left field. It has been political war, from the right, from day one.
There was never any pretending that there would be some nostalgic, “Ronald Reagan Morning in America.” There was never a realistic faint hope that there would be consensus with across the isle coming together in some kumbuya moment. That was not what the right in this country desired, that was made obvious before the election. It has all been about demonizing this man, the overall goal of making him a “one term” guy.
Over the last decade-plus, the political right has seen fit to set a very high-bar political standard, first with Karl Rove(ism), and subsequently with, well, destruction of what most old-style conservatives would consider the demise of the political philosophy. I believe that the rest of my life will see political warfare–no one seems to be looking for a “Morning in America.” And do we honestly believe that, should a conservative achieve the White House, there will be some new-day leadership with the blessings of the Democratic party? I mean, look at the banner on this page. Newt Gingrich as a frontrunner for the GOP? You’ve got to be kidding.
Sorry for the rant. Really, what I say doesn’t make a hill-o-beans difference in the greater scheme of things but “Morning in America???” It’s overall very depressing.
This is too much fun to be legal, but JP, you hit the nail on the head: “and more recently from way out there in left field.”
The right can keep quiet and just read Dowd and other left leaners, check blogs here on TMV for stuff like: milquetoast, lacking in jockstrap filler (cleaned up version), Hillary could have done better, etc.
He’s not doing better because Americans are stupid and shortsighted. Its just that simple. Name one candidate from the GOP that would have done better under the same circumstances. The GOP had 8 years to show us what they could do. 8 years where congress did almost everything the president asked. They tanked this country with just about every move. They would have destroyed Social Security in 2005-2006 if they had their way and privatized it but thank god at least that policy failed.
Obama has been unimpeded in one area, foreign policy, and he has done very well there. On the domestic side the GOP has actually said they are going to do everything they can to make sure Obama is a one term president. They will hold up everything, and then blame him for getting nothing done. And you know what, a large chunk of Americans are actually doing just that. Stupidity. We know where the blame belongs. The dogs now running the GOP have turned it into nothing more than schills for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, don’t have a clue about foreign policy other than lets invade and kick some ass, and seem to think that approaching the problems we face with all the nuance of a 3rd grader is the way to go.
We have literally lived thru what it is like under GOP way of doing things and watched them piss away just about everything we had going for us. Good lord please bring back the GOP of the 70′s and 80′s. We can’t take any more of the new batch.
What slamfu said. (better than I did)>:-)
I agree with the poster above who said that just because 54% of America does not think that President Obama deserves to be re-elected does not mean that many of those 54% will not vote for him.
I am in that 54%. I never wanted President Obama to win either the Nomination or the Presidency. I backed Clinton and Romney in the primaries, thinking them the two strongest candidates to actually handle the issues that were going on then, and still are going on. I ended up writing in McCain and Biden, because I thought McCain better to be POTUS than Obama, but couldn’t stomach Palin in the Naval Observatory.
Given that Gingrich, who is crazier than a flock of loons, is moving up the ranks, and actually is leading for the time being, I cannot think but that I might have to vote for Obama. He’s not done THAT bad a job. I can complain about many of the initiatives he’s passed, including Obamacare, and the like, but he is, quite frankly, saner than Gingrich, Perry, Cain, Bachmann, Paul, and Santorum combined, and smarter than Paul, Perry, Cain, and Bachmann combined, and Bachmann is one smart cookie, nuttier than a five-ton fruitcake, but very smart.
Slamfu nailed it. I shudder to imagine what could have happened to this country if republicans had managed to run it for another 4 years after the GWB idiocracy. As bad as things are, they could have been much, much worse.
PBF, they would have been better, you were right: “I ended up writing in McCain and Biden, because I thought McCain better to be POTUS than Obama, but couldn’t stomach Palin in the Naval Observatory.”
JS– I’m with you all the way. It almost seems like everyone’s forgotten just how bad it was.
I don’t think McCain would have been that big of an improvement over W, especially with his desire to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely and his totally aggressive stance on Iran. We could have found ourselves mired in 3 foreign wars at one time. McCain moved sharply to the right when he realized the TP was planning on running a candidate to the right of him in his last Senate race- so you can’t trust his positions. The worst decision I saw him make tho- was picking Palin for VP. A heartbeat from the presidency…………..
So,Bluebelle, Adding Libya, potentially Syria, and where else to Iraq and Af’Stan is somehow BETTER?? Or pissing off our “allies” in Pakistan?
What’s the math on that, please?
Someone said if folks voted for McCain, we’d have four more years of Bush…and they were right-Obama was elected, and he amped GW’s policies up like Spinal Tap’s gear, “To Eleven”.
The “Expectations” were unreasonable on the Left side of the aisle- BHO’s “Hope and Change” campaign, put into practice with single-party control of both houses of Congress, resulted in:
A: MORE foreign wars
B: MORE money for crooked Wall-Street species, including bailouts, ‘stimulus’ to connected cronies, and expansion of the national debt beyond the means of your Grandchildren to pay off…
C: “Universal” healthcare that is not single-payer, nor universal, nor, possibly, constitutional in structure, including adoption of one of the GOP’s worst ideas yet-the Individual Mandate that makes it a crime to not buy oligopoly-provided insurance underwritten by the same crooked executives that ruptured the economy…
D: 8.8% unemployment? Try over NINE, and still going on.
E: All of the above and MORE.
The correct answer, is “E”, which is why the approval ratings for this very…eloquent speech-machine and handsome teleprompter reader’s job performance are so LOW.
America Voted with its collective glands in 2008, and what we got, is not merely “More of the same”, but “More of the Same, bigger, longer, and uncut.”
Not that McCain was in any way better-he got the GOP nomination mainly because he was “Dole” that year-a year where no republican, no matter HOW good, could have won the General Election, so they tossed it to the guy who’d been running the most often, with the most money, rather than putting in an honest effort to find someone who could…y’know…win and stuff.
It was the Dems’ year, and they blew it-not as bad as they did in 04, or we’d be complaining about McCain/McSame…but they blew it-they chose pretty and vain over experienced, skilled, responsible and Decisive.
The promise was Change, the result was Bush 3.0, presented by Solyndra, Citibank, and Bank of America’s Credit department.
CS, you lived up to your name on that tirade. But, even exaggerated, you make some valid points. Yes, we probably have Bush Lite in military matters, but no 3.0.
I believe that Obama is a good guy but over his head such that the Reps can really dance him around too much. His one chance to do a good job was at the start with a true universal HCR, but inexperience thwarted that and he was off balance the rest of the way.
Cannonshop— Are you so blind that you can’t see the difference between a neocon regime and one that is using American power in a measured fashion? We are not at war with Libya– but guess what? Qaddafi is dead and his son is in custody. We are pulling our soldiers out of Iraq on schedule and OSB was hunted down like a dog by Navy Seals and shot. But no credit there right?? Or for using the drones to take out the higher ups in al queda so that they have been decimated.
You do realize that during the last administration Dick Cheney was pushing to invade Iran-?
And Obama is a Keynesian– a theory that believes that you spend money during an economic free fall to avoid another great Depression. His policies DID save the Big 3- as I recall. While you may not believe they deserved the help, think what a ghost town Detroit would have become without the automotive industry.
The payroll tax cuts help the middle class and extending unemployment benefits shelters many jobless folks from the ill effects of a poor job market. The Bush tax cuts in wartime were a double whammy – remember Cheney saying there was nothing wrong with deficit spending?? I believe that the housing market is also keeping the economy down– but all of it was inherited not created.
As far as healthcare– the bill was tinkered with in Congress until it no longer resembled its original form.
I do have some problems with the President being too willing to compromise- trying too hard to reach a consensus with the hard, uncompromising right- but that is the leadership style he campaigned on.
Bluebelle: What is the reason for the power of the VETO, Bluebelle? “Health Care” passed on a straight party-line vote in a congress with a same-party majority for both houses-the same party as the President. Barack Obama’s a Harvard Trained Attorney. If the bill was too ‘fiddled’ with, he had the power and opportunity to say “No, Fix It.”
It’s part of his JOB. The Republicans in Congress were blocked OUT of the process, remember? “Read the Bill” because it was rushed through? (Or, did you forget that part of the whole situation?)
Libya: What, exactly, was the purpose of that? YOu call it “Measured”, but what was the objective of removing a regime that was COOPERATING with us, one that had already BEEN Punished and suffered for sponsoring attacks against americans, and actually LEARNED FROM THE EXPERIENCE?
Sure, savages, right?? most of the world is Savages. changing one for another serves NO useful purpose, nor does swapping a Technocrat for Radical Islamists. What was missing in all the justifications, pardon me for saying it, is the rational reason we had to intervene militarily in a civil war that, had we NOT intervened, would have been over months earlier.
Next: Stimulus.
Obama was as Keynesian, as Dick Cheney. it is ALL about follow-the-money. The lion’s share of Stimulus money went to existing projects that were already approved. Much of the rest going to ‘green jobs’ initiatives that quickly obtained waivers to avoid having to do what Stimulus was supposed to do-train or pay for NEW workers. Instead of ONE Halliburton, we got dozens, with the big separation being that those dozens for the most part don’t do anything but gobble money and shuffle papers…using their existing staff.
Keynesian stimulus doesn’t work that way-a KEYNESIAN stimulus pays for NEW construction of infrastructure, and suspends rules that block or interfere with the goal of putting people to work.
Crony Capitalism, on the other hand, works the way the Stimulus worked. We got Cook County on a TVA budget, not Keynesian Stimulus.
Carter and Nixon tried HCR and now Obama can take credit for the current one.
“How’s that Dr. Frankenstein, of course we can teach him to dance given enough time.”
[...] Why Isn’t Obama Doing Better?The answer may be in the question itself. Contrasting Barack Obama’s demeanor with the rage and unearned self-regard of his would-be successors, Congressional critics and Murdoch media attack dogs—-and his low-key response to that rabid criticism–may Comments (0) [...]