The Obama Hockey Stick and the desperate attempt to 'Hide the Decline'
By Nile Gardiner
The last few weeks have been among the worst of Barack Obama’s time
in office, recalling earlier periods of turmoil for the president in 2010 and 2011,
when his ratings also plummeted. In 2013, the situation is
significantly worse for the White House, with the Obama administration
engulfed in a series of major scandals (IRS persecution of conservative
groups, the Benghazi debacle, and the Justice Department seizure of
journalists’ phone records) that are not only eroding trust in
government but also in the office of the president itself. This is
undoubtedly a period of steep decline for the Obama presidency, whose
imperial-style big government approach is being increasingly questioned
not only by American voters, but also by formerly subservient sections
of the liberal-dominated mainstream media. In contrast to his first
term, Barack Obama is finding himself less and less shielded by the
press, and far more vulnerable to public criticism.
With good reason, Americans don’t feel optimistic about their
country’s future with President Obama at the helm. According to the RealClear Politics polling average, less than one in three Americans believe the United States is heading in the right direction. A new Economist/YouGov poll has
the president’s job approval rating at just 46 percent, with 49 percent
of Americans disapproving. Strikingly, 35 percent of Americans
“strongly disapprove” of the president’s job performance, 15 points
higher than the number who “strongly approve.” A mere 31 percent of
Americans surveyed by YouGov believe the United States is “generally
headed in the right direction.”
In addition to damaging scandals, which have raised major questions
over the integrity and judgment of the Obama administration, there
remain deep-seated concerns over the US economy and the enormous
national debt, widespread opposition to the president’s health care
reforms, and significant fears over national security. Barack Obama’s
second term could not have started more badly for the “hope and change”
president, who, with three and a half years in office remaining, looks
more and more like a lame duck. Here are ten key reasons why the Obama
presidency is in trouble, with the outlook exceedingly grim for the
White House
1. The American public is losing trust in Obama
A recent Quinnipiac survey
found that less than half of Americans (49 percent) now view their
president as “honest and trustworthy.” According to Quinnipiac, the
series of recent scandals have begun to significantly dent the
president’s standing with the American people, with his approval rating
standing at just 45 percent. The IRS targeting of conservative groups
has been particularly damaging, with 76 percent of voters supporting
the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the scandal, and
a series of Congressional hearings putting the Obama administration on
the spot. Another survey, by NBC News/The Wall Street Journal,
reveals a great deal of public concern over the “overall honesty and
integrity of the Obama administration,” with more than half of Americans
agreeing that recent scandals have “raised doubts” about the
government’s trustworthiness. 41 percent of Americans believe that
President Obama himself is “totally” or “mainly” responsible for the
government’s handling of Benghazi – just 19 percent believe he bears no
responsibility. On the IRS issue, only 24 percent say the president is
not responsible in any way, while a third of Americans think he is
largely culpable.
2. The Obama presidency is imperial in style and outlook
Leading conservative talk radio host Mark Levin was absolutely right when he blasted Barack Obama on Fox News back in January as “an imperial president.”
It would be hard to find a US president in recent times who has behaved
in a more arrogant fashion than President Obama, and that includes
Richard Nixon. The Obama White House is routinely disdainful of
criticism, sneeringly dismissive of Congressional opposition, nasty and
brutish towards dissenting voices in the media, and completely lacking
in humility. Even veteran reporters such as Bob Woodward, one of two
journalists who broke the Watergate scandal, have found themselves on
the sharp end of the White House’s boot after publishing unflattering
stories. Woodward was warned earlier this year by
a senior White House official that he would “regret” his remarks about
the president’s handling of the sequester issue. At the same time the
Obama presidency exudes a shameless “let them eat cake” mentality,
abundantly on display with the president’s lavish vacations and golfing
expeditions while millions of American families have struggled to pay
their mortgage and stay afloat against the backdrop in recent years of
the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression.
3. Most Americans are still worried about the economy
Economic concerns are the top priority for Americans according to Gallup. In a recent poll,
86 percent of Americans agreed that “creating more jobs” and “helping
the economy grow” are the top two priorities. “Making government work
more efficiently” came third, at 81 percent. Despite a slight uptick in
economic growth, and improving housing prices in some markets, the
United States still has deep-seated economic problems. Most Americans
are still nervous about the economy. According to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey,
just 46 percent of Americans approve of the job Barack Obama is doing
in handling the economy. 64 percent of Americans are “somewhat
dissatisfied” or “very dissatisfied” with the state of the US economy
today. Only 32 percent believe the economy will get better in the next
12 months. 58 percent of Americans still think the country is in an
economic recession.
Strong job creation and robust economic growth are being
significantly hampered in the United States by declining economic
freedom, including rising tax rates, the growing burden of government
regulation, and a rising dependency culture. Unemployment still remains
at 7.5 percent, with nearly 12 million Americans out of work. 47 million Americans are living on food stamps (the highest figure in American history), and a staggering 128 million Americans are
now dependent upon government programmes. A full economic recovery
still remains far away. According to the Federal Reserve, Americans have rebuilt less than half of the wealth lost to the recession. As The Washington Post
reported: “The research from the St. Louis Fed shows that households
had accumulated net worth totaling $66 trillion at the end of last year.
After adjusting for inflation and population growth, the bank found
that number amounted to only 45 percent of the wealth that Americans had
during the peak of the boom in 2007.”
4. America’s level of debt is frightening
America’s economic problems are compounded by its huge debt problem.
Barack Obama continues to lead the United States down the path of
European Union-style decline, with incredible levels of public debt,
currently standing at $16.85 trillion, a per person debt of $53,000.
President Obama has done nothing to confront the vast entitlement
programmes that are a yoke around the necks of future generations of
American taxpayers, while taking an axe to defense spending, resulting
in politically driven cuts that undermine America’s national security
while doing nothing to reduce the country’s debt burden. As he made
clear in his Inauguration address in
January, President Obama remains committed to a big spending, big
government vision, and one that will force the United States down the
road to economic ruin unless it is reversed.
5. Obamacare is hugely expensive and increasingly unpopular
A key liability that will further expand America’s debt mountain is
Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act), the Obama administration’s hugely
ambitious and expensive health care reform initiative that threatens to
dramatically increase the cost of healthcare for ordinary Americans as
well as businesses, when it goes into effect next year. Forbes Magazine reports that in California Obamacare is expected to increase individual health insurance premiums by 64 to 146 percent. The latest Congressional Budget Office estimate puts a $1.85 trillion price tag on Obamacare in its first 10 years. A clear majority of Americans oppose Obamacare. The latest CNN/ORC International poll shows 54 percent opposing the law. A Reason/Rupe poll found that a mere 32 percent support it. An April poll by the Kaiser Foundation, and reported by Politico, revealed that
“just 35 percent of Americans view Obamacare ‘very’ or somewhat’
favorably, down 8 points since Election Day.” Opposition in the business
community is also high, especially among small businesses, the bedrock
of the US economy. Gallup finds
that 48 percent of small business owners say the Affordable Care Act is
bad for business – just nine percent say it will be good for business.
As Obamacare rolls in, opposition to its implementation will only grow.
If the Republicans retake the Senate in 2014, expect Congress to launch a
major effort to repeal it.
6. Independents are rapidly withdrawing support for Obama
As Gallup polling has consistently shown, America is ideologically a conservative nation, with conservatives outnumbering liberals by a nearly two to one margin. Strikingly, as Gallup has found,
more than 50 percent of Americans view Obama as more liberal than
themselves, with just 27 percent of voters declaring that they share the
same ideology as the president. Despite a clear advantage in terms of
ideology, the Republicans have struggled to win over sufficient numbers
of “moderates” (roughly a third of US voters) in the last two
presidential elections, many of whom identify themselves as
“Independents.” There are signs, however, that support for Obama among
Independents is dramatically falling. According to the recent Quinnipiac survey,
57 percent of Independent voters give Obama a negative rating, up from
48 percent on May 1st. 56 percent of Independents do not believe the
president is “honest and trustworthy.” By a 45 percent to 35 percent
margin, Independents believe that Republicans in Congress are doing a
better job than President Obama on handling the economy.
7. The liberal media is less deferential to Obama in his second term
The Washington Post, standard bearer of the liberal
establishment in the US capital, has labeled the IRS scandal a “horror
story” for the Obama administration. Even The New York Times, the de facto inflight newspaper of Air Force One, recently carried a headline on its front page declaring: "Onset of Woes Casts Pall Over Obama's Policy Aspirations." The
liberal mainstream media closed ranks behind Barack Obama for most of
his first term in office, and relentlessly pummeled his presidential
election opponent Mitt Romney ahead of the November 2012 vote, in a
shameless display of bias towards their favoured candidate. The big
liberal newspapers and the major television networks, NBC, ABC and CBS,
have been less willing to bat for Obama in his second term as public
opinion has begun to turn against the White House. Clearly, there are
some things even the most liberal columnists are finding hard to defend,
such as the ruthless targeting of political opponents. Meanwhile, MSNBC, President Obama’s biggest flag-waver on cable news, has seen its ratings plummet in recent months, with Fox News further building its dominance of the ratings.
8. The Benghazi scandal has been extremely damaging
Much as the Obama administration tries to downplay the significance
of the Benghazi scandal, it refuses to go away, with 46 percent of
Americans believing “the administration deliberately misled the American
people about the events surrounding the death of the American
Ambassador to Libya” according to Quinnipiac.
Like the IRS scandal, the Benghazi debacle has undermined trust and
confidence in the Obama presidency. 58 percent of Americans in the most
recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal
survey agree that that the State Department’s handling of the Benghazi
attack raises doubts “about the overall honesty and integrity of the
Obama administration.”
In the aftermath of the barbaric killing of Ambassador Stevens and
three other Americans on September 11, 2012 at the hands of al-Qaeda
linked Islamist militants, the Obama administration tried to pass off
the brutal attack as a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video
that hardly anyone has seen. Undoubtedly worried that the killings would
upset the White House’s carefully crafted narrative in the lead up to
the 2012 election that al-Qaeda was in retreat, administration officials
sought to downplay the broader significance of the attack in the run up
to the presidential vote, a strategy that succeeded in the short term,
but has since imploded in the face of sustained Congressional scrutiny.
Not only has Benghazi damaged the president, it also hurt former
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s image too. As former Reagan
speechwriter Peggy Noonan noted in The Wall Street Journal:
“Will this story ever be completely told? Maybe not. But it’s not going
to go away either. It’s a prime example of the stupidity of
all-politics-all-the-time. You make some bad moves for political
reasons. And then you suffer politically because you make bad moves.”
9. Obama’s national security strategy is weak and confusing
President Obama’s recent address to the National Defense University at
Fort McNair in Washington has to go down as one of the most weak-kneed
speeches by a US Commander-in-Chief in modern times. His call for a
winding down of the global war against Islamist terror was naïve in the
extreme, and sent completely the wrong signal to America’s enemies at a
time when al-Qaeda is strengthening its presence in parts of the Middle
East as well as North, West and East Africa. His declaration (once
again) that the detention facility at Guantanamo should be shut down was
hopelessly unrealistic in the face of concerted Congressional
opposition as well as a humiliating exercise in pandering to
international condemnation in Europe and the Muslim world. His
Guantanamo policy is deeply out of touch as well with American public
opinion. US polls have consistently shown strong
support for keeping the camp in operation. This is hardly a strategy
that will endear President Obama to an American public that feels less safe today than it did in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
10. Obama is “leading from behind” on the world stage
American foreign policy has become even more weak and incoherent in
President Obama’s second term. On the world stage the United States has
not been this powerless and disengaged since the days of Jimmy Carter.
“Leading from behind” is no longer just a mantra for the Obama
administration – it has become its philosopher’s stone. Washington’s
leadership on the Syria crisis is non-existent, with the White House
content to farm out its foreign policy to Moscow and the United Nations.
On Afghanistan, Obama’s position is one of retreat and a handover of
power back to the Taliban. Iran is barely mentioned by the president, as
Tehran’s nuclear ambitions march on. Meanwhile key allies such as
Britain are treated with contempt and lectured to on European policy
as though it were a schoolboy being reprimanded for speaking out of
turn, while the Special Relationship and the transatlantic alliance
continue to be eroded. At home and abroad, the Obama presidency is
weakening America, while undercutting the strength and ability of the
world's only superpower to lead internationally.
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