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Home » Obama’s on a roll—downhill

Obama’s on a roll—downhill

The New Neo Posted on by

Indications are that President Obama is sliding downward in the public’s estimation. For the first time, for example, all the polls show his approval rating falling below 50% (here’s the NY Times’s spin on that). Just as significantly, all but his most die-hard journalistic supporters (and even some of them) are expressing doubts about him.

It’s not just one event that was the turning point. It’s been an accretion of small things, plus a number of larger things, forming a picture that is becoming more and more difficult to shut out. The Holder/Obama KSM decision was one of these larger things; polls indicate that “only 34 percent of Americans support the decision to try the al-Qaida leaders in a federal district court,” whereas “[s]ixty-four percent said they should be tried by a military commission, as the Bush administration planned to do.”

Ouch! That must sting, particularly the public’s widespread agreement with the policy of the nefarious Bush. Obama can’t blame his predecessor for this one, although the main reason Obama chose a civilian trial for KSM would appear to be the need to have the proceedings be a vehicle for making Bush/Cheney look bad. But it seems that most Americans aren’t buying it, nor should they be.

This might just be the most unpopular decision of Obama’s presidency so far, which makes the poll the most encouraging one I’ve seen in a long time. Is common sense finally going to prevail? Are the scales falling from Americans’ eyes about the nature of the man they elected? Is it clear enough now that he has chosen, for petty political reasons, to compromise America’s security?

But it’s not just the KSM trial, not by a longshot. There is general disillusionment with Obama at home and abroad. People are starting to worry that, if Emperor Obama isn’t exactly naked, it looks as though he may have gone out in his skivvies.

Last weekend’s SNL skit was emblematic of the change. This was no gentle ribbing; it was a really nasty piece of work, with a very hard edge. I wonder what the notoriously thin-skinned Obama will think of it.

Here is more bewilderment and disillusionment about Obama, just one of a host of recent articles by Obama supporters who’ve become deeply disappointed in many aspects of his behavior.

Is the Obama administration turning into a short-lived (a single year instead of a hundred) one-hoss shay? You know, the one that:

“went to pieces all at once,
All at once, and nothing first,
Just as bubbles do when they burst.”

For those of us who have never agreed with most of Obama’s policies, and who have long considered him a con and a liar who does not have America’s best interests at heart, the fact that the public is beginning to realize this is good. Let’s hope it’s not too late to reverse the course of the ship of state. But what to do when it increasingly appears that the captain is steering it towards the rocks?

Comments

Obama’s on a roll—downhill — 57 Comments

  1. The Rasmussen Presidential Approval rating is recalibrated daily and quite interesting to follow. After a number of days in double digits, it hit -15 today: his lowest ranking so far.

  2. Like the hundreds of thousands who later claimed they were in attendance at Fenway Park when Ted Williams hit a home run in his final major league at bat- actual attendance was around 6,000- the number of McCain voters will start to increase. That also reminds me of the observation of some that one factor in Obama’s election was that many on the right abstained from voting, so perhaps I should have said the “number of McCain supporters.”

    Of the 34% who support trying KSM in federal court, I wonder how many doing to “support the President,” as opposed to having supported KSM being tried in federal court before Holder made the decision public.

    We got what we paid for: a President whose experience metric most closely resembles that of Warren Harding (Senate experience w none of the following: US VP, US cabinet, House of Representatives, Governor, military). Sarah Palin’s crack about a mayor being a community organizer with actual responsibilities rings truer and truer.

    But this is simply preaching to the choir.

  4. Gringo…..

    Reminds me of the French Resistance, the Marquis. My understanding is that membership peaked in 1956.

    On a more serious note, I think that “Will you kiss me” can easy become a watchword regarding matters Obama going forward.

  5. You have to wonder about someone whose main strategy for looking good is making someone else look bad.

    There have been attempts to show that this decision to try KSM in civilian courts is a reasonable one. Perhaps it is, though I haven’t seen that argued persuasively. What is significant about the poll numbers is that some goodly percentage of Obama’s original supporters – over 30% – are no longer willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on these questions.

  6. I recall the high school lit anthologies used to have The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay.
    IIRC, the various kinds of wood for various uses and parts were described in detail. Probably made more sense to people who had to know how various woods worked.
    Nice analogy, but not sufficient.
    I’d think in terms of something jury-rigged with insufficient duct tape which has been shedding parts since it started.

  7. Whats unfolding is bigger than just an administrations downfall. I see it as 9 solid years of liberal fascism about to be decimated by reality.

  8. The video link says that the video is no longer available “due to copyright restrictions.”

    What a surprise.

  9. Pardon, the actual quote is
    ” This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions. “

  10. katzxy,

    I get that message sometimes with BBC clips.

    For those of us who have never agreed with most of Obama’s policies, and who have long considered him a con and a liar who does not have America’s best interests at heart, the fact that the public is beginning to realize this is good. Let’s hope it’s not too late to reverse the course of the ship of state. But what to do when it increasingly appears that the captain is steering it towards the rocks?

    Do you really want to know the answer?

  11. However Neo,

    It isn’t just ∅bama’s policies. The Democrat party and big government politicians in power here in CA, and at the federal level have led us this way too long.

    We can all list the horrible policies and the discontent that liberals have for America. When they want to ‘transform’ America they have a number of things in mind that are un-American to the core in my mind.

    We all (liberals and conservatives) have good intentions and ‘want’ to make things better for more people.

    But seriously, we have a LOT of teaching to do to really convince people that there is a better way forward – I mean – Californians JUST voted for a host of new bonds and they keep doing it every election cycle.

    Service on the debt of those bonds will haunt CA for decades. Yes, we all want parks, and clean water and stem cell research (not embryonic stem cell research) and clean air (with no pollutant – CO2 is not a pollutant) and good education – but they are voting for bonds for high speed trains and light rail that is COSTING our kids billions of dollars !

    ∅bama is toxic at this point. He is as he is because of his way of being:
    1) not listening to alternative points of view and dismissing them
    2) jumping to conclusions on Cambridge police
    3) all the little foreign policy things like Honduras, Poland, Japan, etc
    4) Stimulous, Health care boondoggling
    5) Farcicle created and saved phrasiology
    6) and then…. this KSM insistence??? OMG !!!

    people cannot talk about ∅bama now without saying “I disagree with some of the things he is doing”

    A conservative platform can truly win in this time because the press and young voters are going through a crash course in liberalism and what it means…

    But are they learning about a strong national security policy and a strong economic policy??? I don’t know.

  12. Yup, we are certainly headed that way. It going to take alot more suffering though unfortunately to get there. Here’s how I think it shakes out:

    Obamacare, cap and tax , and other misc. anti-business laws/taxes get legislated. Combine that with expiration of Bush’s tax cuts and we’ll get 12%+ unemployment say in another year. Businesses are reeling now, with increased regulation and taxation, they’re going to either go out of business or lay off more staff.

    Obama then feeling real heat from the country sh*t cans everybody (Geitner, Axelrod, Orzag, etc..) in despiration and brings in more incompetent socialist economics. Then figures out the only way stimulate domestic job growth by raising tariffs on everything under the sun (already begun with Chinese tires, pipes I believe). We know what happens when trade wars begin…right? Unemployment shoots through 15%+ say second half of 2011. Sometime around then, the WH falls under siege by unemployed Americans whom eventually force Obama to leave the WH before his term?

    # SteveH Says:
    November 24th, 2009 at 3:52 pm

    Whats unfolding is bigger than just an administrations downfall. I see it as 9 solid years of liberal fascism about to be decimated by reality.

  13. I have no more use for McCain than for Obama; they’re both socialists who have little respect for, or even despise, the actual US Constitution (McCain-Feingold, anyone?).

    Until the selection of Palin, I had just about decided to vote for no one for the office of President.

  15. Even Rodins’s caryatid couldnt hold up such a weight.
    everywitchway.net/personal/images/caryatid03.jpg

    truth is perpetual, it needs no energy to maintain itself, it just is…

  16. NickSE wrote, “and we’ll get 12%+ unemployment ”

    We have it here in CA. They still have more registered Democrats than Republicans by FAR.

    And they still will vote for billions of bonds each election cycle.

    One election cycle had $100 billion in bonds! That is as large as the yearly budget here in CA!

    We need to teach personal responsibility. My big government loving neighbor drives a big SUV – yet he wants government to control everybody with respect to CO2. And he voted for the light rail bonds…

  19. Baklava, we’re obviously of a mind generally re California’s numbskulls voting for each and every bond, and in particular the “high speed rail link” (a recent liberal pet project elsewhere, apparently) between LA and SF to “cut congestion.”

    In between LA and SF is…uh…farmland (the Central Valley), but if cutting traffic down from its present car per minute or so gives the braceros out there picking lettuce a bit of piece, I say it’s $10 billion well spent.

  20. Back OT, Obama is going to make us wish Carter were President. He was an imbecile, and a weakling, but at least he was a bona fide American imbecile and weakling.

    The big winner in all this: Hillary.

    I’ve long presumed that she (and/or Bill) took the Messiah’s measure, realized he would crater (anagram of Carter; coincidence? Hmm.), and took the SecState job just to position herself to resign it on a matter of principle in the runup to the 2012 election (my bet: November 2011).

    You can almost hear her cackling as she stirs that boiling cauldron…

  21. In his fall from grace Obama will suffer from his lack of accomplishments in any arena. Empty suit that he is, there is no there there. Most other presidents who suffered criticism had some record of achievement which could indicate they were not a total doofus.

    Eisenhower was the Allied commander and a general. He started the Interstate Highway System because of his experience as a young officer trying to cross the country. JFK was a real war hero. LBJ had a long history of very effective leadership in the Congress. Nixon had many years in government including serving as VP. Bush 1 had an impressive resume’ of accomplishments. Clinton and Bush 2 had been governors. Obama gives a good speech with a teleprompter. His ascent to office involved lots of smoke and mirrors. Now that the curtain has been pulled back, there is no evidence that he ever did anything very well beyond being a student. His defenders are left with little ammunition.

  22. Eisenhower was the Allied commander and a general. He started the Interstate Highway System because of his experience as a young officer trying to cross the country. JFK was a real war hero. LBJ had a long history of very effective leadership in the Congress. Nixon had many years in government including serving as VP. Bush 1 had an impressive resume’ of accomplishments. Clinton and Bush 2 had been governors.

    And Obama had a distinguished record …of standing on street corners with a clipboard, trying to stir up the brothers. Totally comparable.

  23. Eight out of ten of the 52% find themselves waking up with the Raccoon’s Dilema:

    “I can get out of this trap. I just have to chew off a leg…
    ”

    The other two are Susan Sarandon or Andrew Sullivan.

  26. Beginning? I take that as a given. The MSM would’ve gone nuts, of course, and made their choice of lunch entree look like a disaster, but objectively things would have been better.

    Still and all, this delightful little interlude can serve as a purgative of liberalism for the next generation. The only contribution some can make is to serve as an example to others.

  27. Occam.
    The braceros aren’t there. The Delta Smelt got the water and the Central Valley is turning into a dust bowl.
    Last report was 40,000 jobs lost.

  28. Only 34% of Americans support trying KSM in a federal district court. 34 is also the percentage of African Americans who are unemployed right now. Those numbers bear no relevance one to the other, but they certainly are poignant indicators of where America is today. F

  30. Another pop culture indicator: the website below is a gossip site and pretty consistently vulgar. Most of those websites (like Gawker) are leftist in a trendy, superficial way. But, this one really lights into Obama (after revealing that Angelina Jolie is “not a fan” of Obama.)

    To wit: “Obama can’t even pick out a White House dog without taking longer than a murder trial and the only thing he’s won recently is basically Mr. Congeniality at the Nobel Peace Prize awards and 2nd runner up at the Olympic selection ceremony. It’s almost 2010 and Terry Schiavo has accomplished more than he has in the past year. The only way Obama could turn this country into socialist nightmare in the next 72 months is if he managed to resurrect Stalin and gives him Apache Chief’s powers.”

    Here’s the link if anyone wants to visit:
    http://www.idontlikeyouinthatway.com/2009/11/angelina-jolie-is-not-a-fan-of-barack-obama.html

  31. The Asia trip was a disaster. In Japan and China he not only didn’t get what he hoped, but was subtly insulted as well.

    Then in welcoming Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to the White House, Obama said: “Yours is the first state visit of my presidency, its fitting that you and India be so recognized” the 48- yea-r old president told the 77-year-old Indian leader. According to Kevin Williamson, the reaction in India has been ‘Who the heck does this guy think he is?’

    Another little gaffe to add to the presents to Gordon Brown and the Queen, being photographed ‘quietly reading in the Rose Garden” on the day that he was too busy to attend the Berlin celebration of the Fall of the Wall, and all the inappropriate bows and groveling.
    It has to be deliberate, for there is a protocol department at State.

    Is he that angry? Why insult all our friends and suck up to our enemies? It is a mystery!

  32. Wow, that SNL parody was VISCIOUS. I can’t believe it. They were so in the tank for him. It makes me think that back when they were shilling for him they genuinely believed he was a great man, or at least semi-competent. Boy are they gonna be MAD. I must give them credit. They look to be FURIOUS. How dissapointed they must be. I knew Obama was a fraud and dangerous and probably not even American. Of if he is, it’s an awful squeaker, but those kids at SNL. They must feel so duped. Well, at least they’re going after him now. So many liberals can’t accept they were tricked and that they had poor judgment. They still seem to be defending him, sort of. I don’t know. It does seem rather quiet on the Obot-front. Although their frustrations are coming our as nasty attacks on Sarah Palin. Somehow this is all her fault even though she’s not even President. Boy these are interesting times, to quote our Chinese friends, the people who now own us. Does this mean we are going to be Chinese?

  33. I like this roll that Obama is on! Hope it continues.

    Thanks for the essay. It’s good and, as usual, connects important dots. And thanks in particular for the link to Robin in Berkeley and for her take down of leftists.

    Expect a little bump up in support for him though around / after Dec 1st.

  34. Anothers tidbit which probably no one missed, but:

    No need for results, Obama returns from Asian tour and announces he has “restored America’s image”.

    Someone needs to stick him with needles pronto as a last ditch effort, just to make sure that he hasn’t actually been asleep for the past 30 years.

  35. I enjoyed the one hoss shay and the bursting bubble.

    To me, Obama’s realization of failure will happen as Hemingway’s description of a man going broke “slowly at first, then all at once.”

  37. will Says:

    So there is indeed a protocol department at State?, well, it get’s a bit clearer then.

    Yes, the Office of the Chief of Protocol
    http://www.state.gov/s/cpr/ is a State Dept. position. Problem is, one has to have a POTUS being self-aware to his shortcomings and actually listen to and act on the advice of other people more knowledgable for the Office of the Chief of Protocol to be effective. Obie fails on both points as he’s the smahtest preznit evah! Just look at his college transcripts. Oh wait. . . .

  38. Problems that are deep and wide. Not the least of which are the millions who just want to be fed for a day. Every day.

  39. ‘Who the heck does this guy think he is’ apparently the reaction in India. This is the most succinct and adequate expression of the Obama phenomenon I have come across.
    Indeed, who does this guy think he is?
    It is not just that he is arrogant. It is a very weird kind of arrogance. This nobody from Chicago really seems to think he is above all civilizations. But then, when you don’t really belong to any one, you can think you are above all.

  40. “But then, when you don’t really belong to any one, you can think you are above all.”

    Wandriaan, that’s a thought-provoking insight. I’ve been thinking lately about the rootlessness of Obama’s childhood. I have a friend who is American by birth and citizenship, but who spent most of her childhood in another country where her parents were missionaries, growing up as fluent in that country’s language and culture as in that of the US. She often speaks of the dislocation that resulted. She loves both places, but does not experience either one as “home” — whichever one she’s in, she is thinking of the other. As a result, she has no home (and this is reflected in her politics — left/liberalism grounded in deep suspicion of almost anything the US does.) But at least she had a strong family to belong to. Obama didn’t have even that — a father who left him and then died, a mother who left him and then died, a stepfather who briefly gave him his name and then disappeared from his life, and grandparents who didn’t take him in until he was 12, almost at the end of his childhood. He really doesn’t belong to anyone or any place at all.

  41. Wandriann – he thinks he’s the bride at every wedding, that who.

    Mrs. Whatsit, several commenters here, I among them (cough, cough) have extended that idea, noting that Obama thinks of himself has the great halfway point between all factions, and by his mere presence can bring them together. Half white, half black; half elite, half third-world; half Christian, half Muslim: there’s more if you think about it. Like a modern Kwisatz Haderach, he contains all contradictions into himself, believing that everyone naturally trusts him and sees his wisdom.

    This would be a natural and understandable outgrowth of his heritage and upbringing, and an interesting perspective, but it doesn’t really qualify him for anything.

  42. It’s important to note that Obama’s approval ratings are operating from a floor of about ten percent because his black support is rock solid and impervious to his performance. Recent Gallup data show a slight increase in the near total black support for him. Blacks are going to support him all the way to jail (think Marion Berry). Thus, Obama’s support among people who can be swayed is much worse than overall numbers would suggest.

  43. Germans are noting that Obama, following in Bush’s footsteps, is refusing to sign the landmine treaty. That can’t help his image among those who believe that peace will come when only the Russians, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, and, I believe, North Koreans are allowed to use them. And all these peace lovers thought Obama was on their side.

  45. But what to do when it increasingly appears that the captain is steering it towards the rocks? I’m sure I don’t know. Where was it everybody was going to go if Bush beat Gore?

  46. Judith (from 11/25 post, 12:19 a.m.), the site “I don’t like you in that way” is, I am sorry to say, NOT any sort of a reliable indicator that even the trashy gossip sites are turning away from Lefty Obama worship. My spouse visits that site about once a week to see celeb “news” and chuckle at the guy’s snarky comments.

    Whoever the guy is who runs that site is either a flat-out conservative, or at the very least is middle of the road. Based on similar social commentary (usually involving gay issues and not right vs left) I have observed in the past.

    Not representative. Didn’t mean to burst your bubble.

    I’ll be more encouraged that the gossip/celeb industry is finally turning on “The Won” when we see e.g., People magazine stop fawning, when John Stewart finally fully turns a la the recent SNL skit, etc. We’re a LONG way from that.

    The SNL skit is a start. But I have learned to be highly skeptical of the leftist MSM. Are they setting him up to be the “comeback kid” as soon as ANY sort of uptick occurs in the economy, or as soon as some foreign event can be “spun” as a big diplomatic “victory.”

  47. AVI: ‘he thinks he’s the bride at every wedding’. Well, I think it is different than that. A man like Sadam Hussein thought that, it is what every arrogant dictator thinks about himself. But Obama is different. His rootlessness
    produces a flexibility to all sides, but without gut grounding. This is his ‘blandness’, that people talk about and it is also different from the mere people pleasing slickness of Bill Clinton.
    Not only do I not know who this guy is, I doubt that he knows himself. People like this are often misperceived as ‘geniuses’, because they seem to can do anything. But they are just talented people, whose talents are insufficiently grounded psychologically.
    His rootlessness suits dangerously today’s dominant , false religion of leftist liberalism. For leftist liberalism the ideal is a society of rootless, atomic individuals. Perhaps that too is part of his appeal.

  48. I agree with the comments on Obama’s rootlessness based upon his childhood experiences. I believe he also has daddy separation issues times 2. Throw affirmative-action advancement into the mix, and you end up with a narcissist sociopath. Because he has not been held to any sort of standard, along with his ‘ideas’ never being questioned or his having to defend them in a serious rational manner, in his mind he can do no wrong, and nobody can tell him otherwise. He is the great “I won!”

  49. The decision on trying KSM in civil court is based on Obama looking good to the rest of the world, which also means making Bush/Cheney look bad. The safety and security of Americans comes last for BO and Holder.

    BTW When I called the AJ’s office, a live person answered my call. However, when I told her that I was calling about the KSM decision, she immediately transferred me to voice mail.

  51. Amazing graph, Baklava.

    Only 8% of Obama’s cabinet has ever worked in the private sector. Not much business experience there.

  52. It is a tell.

    Promethea, What does ∅bama value?

    His words often indicate what he believes and thinks. Many choose not to listen…

    It was apparent to me from the campaign days even before the “spread the wealth” comment when he was talking about American oil company profits of 25 billion and government taking those profits.

    Oil companies have been demonized so that nobody wanted to defend such a “taking”. Nevermind that these are American companies competing against foreign oil companies – investing in alternative fuels and making a paltry profit compared to other sectors.

  53. re graph of Presidential Cabinets: Holy ineffective yet pretentious functionaries, Batman! I can’t IMAGINE why they say Washington DC is out of touch.

  54. Baklava,

    Thanks for posting that graph link. I’m spreading it around. No wonder we have a President and his cronies who only believe in big government. The only thing they’ve collectively ever done in their entire lives is suck at the Government’s teat.

  55. No, the People won’t learn jack. See this, from Art Diamond’s blog.

    “Henry Morgenthau, Jr. was FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury from 1934-1945. In the following important quote, he admits that the big New Deal stimulus spending programs had failed.

    “We have tried spending money. We are spending more money than we have ever spent before and it does not work.

    . . . I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job, I want to see people get enough to eat.

    We have never made good on our promises. . . . I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started . . . . And an enormous debt to boot!

    Source:
    Burton W. Folsom, Jr. In New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America. 4th ed. New York: Threshold Editions, 2008.

    (Note: ellipses in Folsum’s version of the quotation.)

    Folsum says that this statement was from testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee in May 1939; and can be found in Morgenthau’s Diary entry for May 9, 1939 at the Roosevelt Presidential Library.”

  56. And Roosevelt was elected again. By a huge margin. By folks who thought of him as the Father-figure of the Country.

    But he was charming!

  57. CNN/Opinion Research Corp. is a “right wing blog”?

    And Muslims must be awfully stupid if they can be tricked into conducting suicide attacks by mere Jooos. Just sayin’.

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