I have been blogging that Obama is no different than our current and future generations of Americans – he and they are narcissists that only care about themselves and pleasuring their massive egos. For this reason, America is losing its edge in the corporate and political world because political and corporate leaders are making decisions based on what is advantageous to themselves and not what is best for the American people.
There is no question that Obama had the popularity of a rock star during the campaign and the onset of his presidency. He had a favorable rating well above 70%. This popularity, however, is the same for most newly elected first term presidents. And when the American electorate realizes these newly elected presidents can do little to solve our national and foreign problems, their popularity begins to sour quite rapidly. In fact, after two years in the oval office, most presidents see their approval numbers slip under their unfavorable numbers.
All of this being said most presidents understand that lower approval numbers is the nature of politics. It is human nature to turn against people in positions of power. But in a country where Americans are evenly split over moral, domestic, and foreign issues, it is certainly no surprise that a president’s approval numbers would eventually drop to 50% or lower. Yes, most presidents realize that any action or policy they will support or enact will more than likely lose the support of half the electorate. Thus, over the course of several years a presidential administration can see a rapid decline in their approval ratings.
For this reason, most presidents often admit that they are too busy to keep up with their favorability polls. Besides, most presidents feel they are making decisions which are in the best interest for the nation and therefore, disregard disapproval ratings as the public being uniformed over issues such as national security. For instance, the public was outraged over the Bush administration’s policy of indefinitely holding enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has come to realize that they not only must hold detainees indefinitely, but it is nearly impossible to close the facility. The public is simply ill informed on dozens of threats made against the U.S. on a daily basis. And it is also important to keep in mind that presidents do not track their approval ratings for good reasons. After all, it makes little sense to make popular decisions that are not in the best interest of national or economic security.
While most presidents ignore their approval ratings, one president does not – Obama. During an interview with Barbara Walters Obama he claimed he was “not unpopular”. He pointed out that his approval ratings are higher than both Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan at the same time of their presidencies. Thus, Obama is the only president (at least to admit it), that is tracking his favorability ratings.
Well we got news for President Obama – if your disapproval rating is higher than your favorability rating – you are unpopular. What’s worse for Obama is that his favorability ratings track about 5 to 10 points higher than poll ratings on his policies. This means many Americans may like Obama the man, but dislike his policies.
And unlike Obama, both Reagan and Clinton made adjustments during their presidencies and learned from their mistakes. Clinton moved his policies to the center in 1994 and worked with Republicans to balance the budget. Reagan also inherited a recession, but unlike Obama, Reagan focused most of his energies on the economy until it finally turned around in 1983.
The bottom line is that Obama is more unpopular than his poll numbers indicate and these polls will continue to track downwards if he continues to try to appease his liberal base. Obama’s statement about his popularity only illustrates that this statistic is important to him and his ego and he will therefore, make decisions to try to keep his approval numbers high. And when that does not work, he will resort to blaming his unpopular predecessor for his failures.
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