The Obama Presidency in Meltdown

How bad has it been for President Obama this summer? So bad that even liberals are now turning on him. The President's low standing in the eyes of his opponents is no surprise. What is a surprise is the degree to which the president’s supporters, including many independents, are joining the anti-Obama chorus. 

• According to the Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, US voters' rating of the President has fallen to -22 points – a new all-time low. Only 24% of American voters strongly approve of the president’s performance on the job. Nearly twice that number, 46%, strongly disapprove. Two-thirds of poll respondents – 65% – think the country is on the wrong track. Among independents that figure rises to 70%.
  
  

• Disapproval of President Obama has risen above 50% in the RealClearPolitics average-pole ratings, a strikingly high level for a president so early in his term.
  
  

• The USA Today/Gallup survey shows Mr. Obama at 41% approval/53% disapproval.

The precipitous fall of the President is traceable to many things:

• Fear about the US economy, with rampant concern for high, unemployment, a sagging housing market, and the enormous budget deficit. More than ever before, Americans reject Obama’s statist cures for our economic ailments, which many are convinced will send the United States over the same cliff as Greece.
  
  

• Growing anger with Obama’s overweening leadership style, together with an intensifying perception that he is indifferent to or out of touch with the economic plight of ordinary Americans. The President's glaring lack of leadership – and his inexperience – have gone a long way toward diminishing his credibility with the public. His abysmal performance in response to the Gulf oil spill has done him particular harm.
  
  

• Things are no better on the foreign policy and national security fronts. The President's leadership on the Afghanistan war has been halting and half-hearted, and unduly influenced by domestic political concerns. Overall his foreign policy has been dreadful, with his wrong-headed strategy of courting enemy regimes being a conspicuous failure. And with the War on Terror, the Obama administration cannot even bring itself to accurately label it, much less aggressively fight it.

Can it get any worse? Sure it can. Here are 10 key trouble-spots for the Obama administration, and why they will probably only fester between now and election day.

1. The Obama presidency is out of touch with ordinary Americans.
   
   In many ways the Obama administration is the modern-day equivalent to  an Ancien Régime – insular, ostentatious, and morbidly self-absorbed. First Lady Michelle Obama’s calamitous trip to Spain at a time of widespread economic suffering has become iconic in the worst way: symbolic of an administration that is profoundly indifferent to public opinion, and damnably preoccupied with the status and perks of office.
   
   

2. Most Americans have a low opinion of Obama's leadership.
   
   This absence of trust in and respect for Obama’s leadership is of paramount importance. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll has found that “nearly six in ten voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country”. Two thirds of respondents consider themselves “disillusioned with or angry about the way the federal government is working.”A remarkable 58% of Americans have no confidence in Obama's decision-making abilities, while only42% say they do have confidence.
   
   

3. Obama no longer inspires.
   
   His soaring rhetoric at the 2004 Democrat Convention in Boston impressed millions at the time, but the spell is long-broken; America has grown weary of Barack Obama’s flat monotone and his listless, teleprompter-driven speeches. From his painfully underwhelming speech at West Point on Afghanistan to his inert State of the Union address, President Obama has failed to sway the heart-strings of the same American voters who swooned in droves in 2008.
   
   

4. The United States is awash in debt.
   
   The Congressional Budget Office Long-Term Budget Outlook paints a truly frightening picture of the magnitude of the country's national debt. With its alternative fiscal scenario, the CBO is projecting that US debt might rise to as much as 87% of GDP by 2020, 109 percent of GDP by 2025, and 185 percent of GDP in 2035. Ironically, much of Europe, led by Britain and Germany, is cutting their deficits with a vengeance, at precisely the time that the Obama administration is wantonly expanding America’s debt, and has no plan in place to avert a looming Greek-style financial crisis.
   
   

5. Obama’s statist message is losing its luster.
   
   The Obama administration's almost pathological focus on porkulus spending and bailouts has had little visible effect on the private economy, but has greatly increased the reach of federal power in America. This has energized the American people to a fever pitch of opposition, to which Obama and his spokesmen can only respond with dismissiveness and deceit.
   
   

6. Obama’s championing of socialized health care is a gigantic political blunder.
   
   In a breathtaking act of recklessness, President Obama poured all of his considerable political capital into a manifestly unpopular and divisive health care reform plan, complete with an horrific price tag of $940 billion, the repeal of which is now supported by 55% of likely voters.
   
   

7. Obama’s management of the Gulf oil spill disaster has been negligent, feckless and political.
   
   Thankfully most of the spilled Gulf oil has either evaporated or been cleaned up. But the political fallout for the White House will be damaging for years to come. Rather than demonstrating true leadership by taking charge and availing itself of offers of international support, President Obama took the low road and vilified a British-American corporation while doing next to nothing to meet the crisis. Tellingly, a poll of voters in Louisiana gave the much-reviled George W. Bush higher marks for his response to Hurricane Katrina, while 62% disapproved of President Obama’s response to the spill.
   
   

8. Under the Obama presidency, US foreign policy is in disarray.
   
   It is difficult to identify even one foreign policy success for which the Obama administration can claim credit. On the other hand it is trivially easy to point out the missteps, which have diminished America's power around the world and damaged our standing among nations.
   
   Bowing down to Moscow on missile defense, failing to aggressively counter Iran’s nuclear ambitions, opposing the legitimate rule of law in Honduras, denigrating Great Britain over the Falklands – all of these have solidified in the public mind the perception of a US administration flailing about, completely out of its league in international relations. President Obama’s foolish strategy of coddling America’s enemies while alienating long-time allies has accomplished nothing other than diminishing ourselves on the world stage.
   
   

9. The Obama administration is clueless on national security.
   
   Whether the subject is Iraq, Afghanistan, or the unmentionable War on Terror, the lack of leadership by President Obama has been impossible to rationalize or deny. While he properly sent tens of thousands of fresh troops to Afghanistan, he undermined US war aims – perhaps fatally – by announcing a timetable for their withdrawal starting in July 2011, effectively empowering the Taliban in the process. By announcing an end to combat operations in Iraq and the withdrawal of all but 50,000 troops (despite increased terrorist violence and a volatile political climate), and in the face of warnings from Iraqi law enforcement and military authorities that they are not prepared to take the reins, President Obama is inviting foreign policy trouble, and crises, in the years ahead.
   
   

10. President Obama rejects the idea of American greatness.
    
    The President has made it painfully clear that he doesn’t share our fundamental notion of American exceptionalism. He has created a new and cringe-worthy tradition by apologizing for his country time and time again. Speaking before the United Nations last year in September he claimed that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.” How a US president can hold these views and simultaneously lead the world’s sole remaining superpower with any degree of conviction is an unsettling question for Americans to have to ponder.

The dismal truth is this: the most radical president in the history of the country has attempted to impose a highly intrusive, statist agenda, which is inimical to the principles of free enterprise, individual liberty, and small government. These principles, which President Obama clearly rejects, have made the US the greatest, the most dynamic, and the most humane power in the world – and the freest society on earth.