From messiah to pariah

[Deckard]

'Even Charles Manson could beat him now'

"One year after his election, Barack Obama's approval rating is lower at this stage than for any US president since Eisenhower."

I really hope he's not going to go down in US history(/folklore) as a disastrous president, with his name synonymous with weakness, ineffectual(ness?), etc. You know, like a certain Dem from 30 years ago.

But increasingly I fear he really is going to be a one-term president - and his unpopularity might lead to someone quite unpleasant replacing him.

Maybe he just needs to learn how to be folksy.
Or maybe he'll get to have a war all of his own.

How do you think he's doing so far?

[Strangelet]

I think he's goneski. Especially if the US enters a period of hyper-inflation, destruction of the dollar, and 20% unemployment, as some economists are predicting to occur by the end of his first term.

And even if that isn't the case, the health care push was such an embarrassment to the democrats that even if he does squeak by the fox news annointed candidate, he'll have a fraction of the creditability and a fraction of the coalition in the legislature that he enjoyed starting his first term.

Its all very sad because he had such a base of support starting out that he could have painted the white house pink and no one would have been able to stop him. And even if someone tried, he could have just gone back to his voter base and pointed a finger at his antagonists and they would have been political toast. That was the mandate. It was not desired he turn washington into a bon fire party on the beach where everyone gets invited and he brings his guitar.

I don't imagine anyone anytime soon entering the presidency enjoying the same privilege as what he just squandered.

I won't be voting for him because of the stimulus. And its not that I don't buy into keynes, its that I see a huge difference between investment and bailout.

It really makes me wonder who was more wrong, the american voters or obama, but definitely something important got miscommunicated in terms of expectations. I personally was looking for something that resembled "change".

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

I still think it's too soon to say.

At this point in time, considering what he's had to work with to get to his ideas for bettering America, he's done the best he can.

[dubman]

i sincerely doubt that obama's managed to garner a lower approval rating than bush TOOK YEARS TO SINK TO after one year, but you guys have fun.

2 years is an extraordinary amount of time.

[Strangelet]

are we talking about bush the band? If not, then come back down from that cloud, dude.

gw bush enjoyed approval ratings in the 80's after the first year and a half, largely because of the war on terror. it took 6 long years afterwards to grind it down to the 40's and 30's.

So yeah its the exact opposite of obama.

But I agree 2 years is an extraordinary amount of time. It doesn't change the fact that the economic factors that may cause things to go further south, which would spell imminent doom to any hope for second term are probably already in place and are probably irreversible at this point.

[Strangelet]

ways obama can win the second term.

1. he starts a weekly televised conversation with the public (not unlike roosevelt's fireside chats, only more hostile) that details his plans, what he's doing, why he's doing it, and who's stopping him.

2. He wraps up one of the wars.

3. The noodleheads on the other side actually push palin through the primaries. Frum, the national review, and other brainier conservatives revolt, buy their souls back from Satan's pawn shop and support a third option, splitting the ticket.

4. the economy rebounds (fat chance)

5. he clears his entire cabinet and starts over with people who are better at getting the job done, as opposed to place holders so that opposing sides can be happy and people can be nice and hold hands.

Bottom line he needs to start going back to the grass roots that he himself organized and patch things up, because when his legitimacy has been so thoroughly chained to the back of a texas pickup truck and dragged for thirty miles, he simply can't rely on the aura and majesty of the presidency to push him over the edge.

[dubman]

Originally Posted by Strangelet

are we talking about bush the band? If not, then come back down from that cloud, dude.

gw bush enjoyed approval ratings in the 80's after the first year and a half, largely because of the war on terror. it took 6 long years afterwards to grind it down to the 40's and 30's.

So yeah its the exact opposite of obama..

this is one of those misunderstandings that arent worth explaining. fixed the post for you <3