By Donald Lambro
Friday, September 06, 2013
President Obama fled his plunging job approval polls this
week in search of support in Europe for his war on Syria. Sweden was his first
stop where he made no sale.
With America's lackluster, job-declining economy now in
its fifth year, Obama has once again left the country to see if he can change
the subject at home where he's become increasingly unpopular. It doesn't seem
to be working.
Thursday's Gallup Poll reports that nearly 50 percent of
Americans now disapprove of Obama's performance. Only 43 percent approve.
But early signs suggest Obama is no more successful at
convincing European leaders about waging war against Syrian thug Bashar
al-Assad than he's been at handling America's economy and other major issues
here at home.
The Swedes said they couldn't support any unilateral
response to Syria's use of chemical weapons. The mood in France is similar
where lawmakers want U.N. approval they know they're not going to get. Great
Britain says it's staying out of this one.
As this is written, the response to Obama's war-making
initiative from other European leaders at the Group of 20 economic summit,
hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg, doesn't look
promising.
There's been no clarion calls from other European allies
in support of Obama's call for action, further damaging his attempted
leadership abroad.
Meantime, relations between Obama and Putin are as cold
as a Moscow winter after the ruthless former KGB agent granted temporary asylum
to American traitor and leaker Edward Snowden. Obama cancelled their planned
meeting at the summit.
But as bad as the president's situation looks in Europe,
it's not any better here where he's getting failing grades from the American
people on his approach to the crisis in Syria.
This week's Washington Post/ABC News poll found that
nearly 60 percent of Americans oppose Obama's plan to conduct a limited bombing
campaign on Assad's military facilities. Among independent voters, opposition
is at 66 percent.
There's less support for the U.S. "supplying weapons
to the Syrian rebels," with a whopping 77 percent opposing such actions.
Those numbers reflect the deeply divided 10-to-7 vote of
approval that the Democratic controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee gave
to Obama's war authorization resolution Wednesday.
For some Democrats, this one was a hold your nose and
vote yes situation, insiders told me. Two Democrats sided with five Republicans
in voting no. A third Democrat, liberal Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts,
opposed the resolution but didn't want to be seen opposing Obama, so he voted
"present."
Hardly a strong vote of confidence from his own party.
All of this exposes a president who does not have the
ability to lead his own country out of a recession, nor does he possess the
leadership qualities needed on the larger world stage in an increasingly
dangerous world.
This week, he was reduced to sophomoric, flim-flam
arguments, denying that he set the "red line" he publicly declared a
year ago in his warning to Assad against using chemical weapons in his attempt
to defeat Syrian rebels seeking to topple his brutal regime.
With a straight face Wednesday, Obama told reporters,
"I didn't set a red line." He went on to say that line was set when
the international community ratified a global treaty that forbid the use of
chemical weapons.
That kind of linguistic gymnastics may work for awhile in
a political campaign here at home, but on the grown-up, global stage, it smacks
of trickery and deceit.
When a president goes abroad to deal with the world's
leaders, the level of respect he earns and receives is by definition drawn from
his achievements at home. On this level, Obama carries an empty suit case.
For nearly half a decade, Obama has presided over a
lethargic economy that he is incapable of nursing back to full health and
vigor. Recent surveys and economic reports testify to his failure. Among them:
-- Economic confidence is falling: "Americans
remained more negative than positive last month about economic conditions in
the U.S," the Gallup Poll reported Tuesday.
-- U.S. workers "still haven't shaken" their
job fears of 2009:
"Nearly five years since the start of the financial
crisis, "employed Americans continue to express elevated concerns about
their job security," Gallup said Monday.
August polls found that U.S. workers "exhibit the
most widespread concern about having their benefits reduced, and that remains
the case today, with 43 percent saying so," Gallup reported.
-- "The U.S. economy looks headed for a rough
autumn, with slowdown threats looming from the housing market, the Middle East
and Washington," the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
-- Recent job gains "have been heavily weighted
toward part-time positions," says University of Maryland business
economist Peter Morici.
"Since January, 936,000 additional Americans report
working part- time, while only 27,000 more say they have obtained full time
positions," he says. The shift to lower-paying, part-time work is "a
reaction to Obamacare health insurance mandates [that] puts downward pressure
on wages and benefits in low paying industries...and widens income
inequality."
These and other trends in America's economic decline
won't change until Obama's policies are changed. But he's out of the country at
the moment, pretending to be a world leader without a following.
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