By Peter Foster
Thursday, October 09, 2014
Barack Obama romped to the presidency of the United
States in 2008 on a tidal wave of ‘hope and change’. Back then, the financial
crisis was raging and US troops were still engaged in combat in Iraq and
Afghanistan, but a fresh-faced Mr Obama brimmed with confidence.
He predicted that future generations would look back on
his election and see the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and
our planet began to heal…when we ended a war and secured our nation and
restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”
Six years later, Mr Obama is weary and greyed and finds
his job approval ratings stuck in the low-40s. This October is the 17th
consecutive month in which polls show that a majority of Americans disapprove
of his leadership.
With November’s mid-term elections less than a month
away, even fellow Democrats won't be seen dead with the man who once
transformed their party's fortunes. Apart from some closed-door fundraisers, Mr
Obama is all but invisible on the campaign trail.
So where did it all go wrong?
It was the economy, stupid…
Since Mr Obama took office facing the worst economic
crisis since the Great Depression, unemployment has fallen from 10pc to 6pc and
American businesses have created 10 million new jobs – that’s more than Japan,
Europe and every other advanced economy combined.
So why do only 39pc of Americans approve of his handling
of the economy, according to YouGov? It’s because too many of those jobs are
“McJobs” – that is, low-paid and part-time work that don’t leave people feeling
better off.
In numerical terms, GDP has risen by 8pc since Mr Obama
took office, but median household incomes are down 4pc and – unlike during the
George W Bush years – there is no housing boom or easy credit make up the
difference.
Then there were healthcare reforms…that were bad for a
president’s health
Elected on a wave of euphoria, Mr Obama bet the house on
reforming America’s Byzantine healthcare system – quite literally as it turned
out.
He succeeded in forcing the Obamacare reforms through
Congress, but the payback came in the 2010 mid-term elections. The Tea Party
movement was born and a fired-up Republican base took back the House of
Representatives. Washington has been gridlocked pretty much ever since.
The big hurdle was the ‘individual mandate’ that forced
all Americans to buy health insurance on pain of a fine. Mr Obama appeared to
underestimate how little Americans, born to be free, like being mandated to do
anything.
Then came the roll-out fiasco…
Mr Obama had promised America they could go online and
buy insurance “the same way you'd shop for a plane ticket on Kayak or a TV on
Amazon”. In the event all they got was error messages and spinning egg timers
as the Obamacare website crashed day after day.
Americans are naturally suspicious about the role of big
government, and the disastrous Obamacare rollout only confirmed many in that
prejudice. Suffice to say Amazon and Kayak would have filed for bankruptcy long
ago if they handled their product launches like Mr Obama’s department of Health
and Human Services rolled out Obamacare.
To confirm the Obama administration’s reputation for
incompetence…
Like George W Bush after Hurricane Katrina, Mr Obama’s
approval numbers never recovered from the sight of his flagship piece of
legislation capsizing so ignominiously before it had even left the harbour.
The ship has been righted and re-floated, but with
further legal challenges pending no-one is too confident of her structural
integrity.
Add to that the Benghazi disaster, where Mr Obama lost
his ambassador to Libya, and the on-going crisis in the administration of
Veterans Affairs, and it seems many voters are no longer inclined to give Mr
Obama the benefit of the doubt.
And all this, just as everyone was getting sick of him
anyway…
Call it the whip-lash effect, but as the saying goes,
“nothing turns to hate so bitter as what once was love.” Having been elected on
a wave of such stratospheric adulation, it was perhaps inevitable Mr Obama
would disappoint more deeply.
Still, America elected to give him a second shot, and at
the start of Mr Obama's second term the nation was brimming with hopes for a
grand bargain on American finances and for a bolder, more engaged President
Obama.
The second honeymoon didn’t last long: from a January
2013 high of +13, the presidential ratings – the difference between those who
approve or disapprove of the president – had slipped underwater by June and in
November hit a rock bottom: -15. They have been gurgling along in the -10
region ever since.
And then along comes Islamic State to blow up the Obama
foreign policy doctrine…
In the past, second-term presidents facing trouble at
home – think Ronald Reagan after Iran Contra, Bill Clinton after impeachment –
have turned to events abroad to restore their presidential credibility. For Mr
Obama, the reverse has proved true.
As a president who campaigned on ending foreign
entanglements, it has been nothing short of humiliating for Mr Obama to be
forced to intervene in Syria and Iraq. It didn't help matters when he admitted
in August that "we don't have a strategy yet" for confronting Isil.
Now, two former top aides have released books criticising
Mr Obama for his lack of leadership over Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and for
the hands-off foreign policy doctrine which the president once memorably
summarised as “don’t do stupid stuff”. Hillary Clinton stuck the knife in ever
further: “Great nations need organising principles,” she observed, “and ‘Don’t
do stupid stuff’ is not an organising principle.”
But there is always golf to take your mind of things…
Golf is usually a retirement option, but to many
observers Mr Obama seems to have taken his early, completing nearly 200 rounds
since taking office – including nearly 40 this year alone.
It’s not that the president doesn’t have a right to
relax, but it wasn’t just Republicans who were angered by the sight of Mr Obama
laughing and joking on a golf cart just minutes after making an announcement
condemning the beheading of the journalist James Foley.
Which perhaps explains why it’s personal now…
For much of the Obama presidency, voters have tended to
draw a distinction between the man and the problems faced by the nation – many
of which, like high deficits, wars and unemployment, were blamed either on the
George W Bush era or global factors beyond the president’s control.
It was that buffer that explained how Mr Obama broke all
historical precedent and won re-election with unemployment running at nearly
8pc. While some of his policies were unpopular, a strong majority still found
the president to be an "honest and trustworthy" leader.
Now those ratings too are under water, and Mr Obama is
identified as part of the problem, with only 27 per cent of Americans believing
that “things in the United States are heading in the right direction” according
to a CBS/New York Times poll this week.
For Democrats hoping keep control of the Senate in
November that’s a horrible number. The Obama love affair looks well and truly
over.
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