Three months ago just after the killing of Bin Laden by brave Navy seals, we were told day after that Barack Obama was now unbeatable for re-election. When the after glow of the end of Bin Laden wore off, the story did not change for a while. Then reality came back to bite Obama and his standing. It is hard to do well as president when you are unable or unwilling to do anything to help restore a damaged economy. It is even harder to do well when it becomes clear to the country that you do not even have a plan or idea as to what would help put the economy on the right path. Americans do not want a clueless bungler as their leader. So, as of now, Obama's approval ratings in nearly every poll are at or just above 40%. That means that disapproval is at or just below 60%.
It has been humorous to see the reactions of Obama's supporters on the left as the vacuous nature of their economic theories has been exposed. Big government economic fixes generally do not work, and that is now an accepted fact in most of America. Another way to say this is that leftist economics has been discredited for the vast majority of American voters. Only the true ideologues still support the need for another stimulus package. The collapse of Obama's poll numbers has also led to hysteria on the left.
Today, however, brings one of the most unintentionally humorous pieces I have seen in a long time. Michael Kazin writing in the New Republic ponderously announces that essentially all presidents end up unpopular. Indeed, nearly all of them leave office with their central goals unachieved. Obama is just another in a long string of presidents to whom this has happened. Hilarious!
Let's look back to see reality. Kazin speaks of presidencies since Theodore Roosevelt. That covers 108 years. Kazin admits that FDR, Eisenhower, Coolidge and Reagan avoided this pitfall and left with full popularity. That covers about 35 years of the period. But even as to the other 73 years, Kazin is not asking the right question. The issue is not which president left without high popularity; it is rather which ones lost their popularity by just two and a half years into their first term and which ones had their programs so completely rejected by public opinion in that short of a time. The answer is not many. George W. Bush was extremely popular after two and a half years in office. He only was brought down by the relentless bad news of the Iraq war as it continued year after year. Bill Clinton was not riding high, but he was still doing fine after a two and half years. George H.W. Bush was at the peak of his popularity after two and a half years. Even Jimmy Carter was not at the depths that Obama has reached in this short time. Gerald Ford can be skipped since he never won the office. Richard Nixon was well on the way to an enormous landslide re-election by this point in his first term. Lyndon Johnson was at his greatest strength and popularity after two and a half years. JFK was also quite popular after two and a half years. Harry Truman is the first president where Kazin's discussion finds a sympathetic example. Herbert Hoover is the second, but Hoover was facing the start of the great depression. Woodrow Wilson was doing quite well in 1915; he was keeping the USA out of World War I. I do not know if there were polls during the Taft administration, so I will offer no evidence on that score. I also omitted Warren Harding since he did not live to see two and a half years in office.
So Obama's fellow presidents who seemed to be failing after two and a half years in office were Truman and Hoover. That means that in 108 years, the presidents in that position were in office for just 13 years or just over 10% of the time.
It seems that Kazin's analysis works just about as well as Obama's economic theories. Both are failures. Sooner or later the left is going to have to recognize Obama for the failure he has been.
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