And a new poll at WaPo says:
Obama ends his fifth year in office with lower approval ratings than almost all other recent two-term presidents. At this point in 2005, for example, former president George W. Bush was at 47 percent positive, 52 percent negative. All other post-World War II presidents were at or above 50 percent at this point in their second terms, except Richard M. Nixon, whose fifth year ended in 1973 with an approval rating of 29 percent because of the Watergate scandal that later brought impeachment and his resignation.I find the headline there painfully funny: "Obama suffers most from year of turmoil, poll finds." It's always all about Obama! Even the suffering. Poor Obama. What about all the people who are suffering as the malfunctioning Obamacare machine cranks into action? I know, the point is that he's doing the worst in the poll, but phrasing it like that — Obama suffers most — is absurd. And I assume they mean to help Obama, to inspire sympathy for him. It's patronizing to him, and it's unsympathetic to everyone else who is suffering.
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50 comments:
Results matter.
termb Buth??
...or term Bush?
Time to pull out our Shelley again:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Just another cultist who pushed in all their chips with this guy, and lost. Perhaps a bit of merit in Fournier's 'advice'? ("Mandates are rarely won on election night").
If you're creative enough you could make just as relevant parallels between any two presidents. Reminds me of those grade school 'How the Lincoln and Kenndy assassinations are similar' projects- Lincoln's killer shot him in a theatre and was caught in a warehouse. Kenndy's killer shot him in a warehouse and was caught in a theatre!
It's like the press is walking on egg shells. I think they want to come right out and say this administration is totally incompetent. However, they've spent the last 5-6 years labeling every critic a racist, they're now afraid to point out the obvious.
WaPo and others almost need to form a 12 step group. At the first meeting they can all go around the circle and say "Hi, I'm WaPo and I'm an enabler"
I know this isn't the point of the post, but it bugs me.
Everyone DOES know that Nixon was never impeached, right? I could accept "threatend impeachment" but am exasperated by what I construe as false conventional wisdom among journalists.
Who the hell was Buth?
Is that some kind of Wisconsin thing?
The narrative is that this is a time of racial healing and awakening, and we must be sensitive to the feelings and history involved.
Should we become over-sensitive, and hang too much weight on our laws and institutions, forcing a lot of change quickly, perhaps we'll end-up with an inexperienced, pretty incompetent and fairly divisive, ideological leader failing to meet most of his own goals.
Nixon's low approval ratings were likely helped by the fact that we were entering a long and painful recession and oil shortage--the worst economy since WWII--and the people tend to let that reflect on the President. Compare that to Clinton maintaining pretty high approval ratings despite a barrage of scandals and the fact that no American would trust him to feed their dog while they were on vacation.
I almost welcome the non-stop props from the media towards obama (his legacy as the first black prez, blah, blah, blah); at some point the condescension's got to sting.
And is that John Wilkes 'Buth'
or more like 'Bush' with a lisp.?
The T and S keys are pretty close to each other on the Dvorak keyboard.
Remember when the MSM defended Bush from attacks by partisan attacks? And that led to his higher-than-deserved approval ratings?
Me neither.
Obama's failure will be understood by the African_American as a betrayal by white Democrats, not any shortcoming of Obama's. That's why the left is so reluctant to criticize Obama. African-Americans won't vote for Republicans but they can certainly not vote for white Democrats.
"Second term Obama is like second term Buth."
I don't know who Buth is, and I hope I never find out.
raf,
I agree. I suppose its just intellectual laziness or mentally condensing the whole Watergate process down into a single mnemonic phrase.
OTOH, it almost like the modern left resents that Nixon resigned before he could be impeached. Sort of wasn't impeached but he darn well should have been. So that's how we'll write it.
Interesting line of rhetoric, the comparator for how bad a president can be has George W. Bush as the baseline. Not a lot for Bush voters to feel proud of there.
I consider Bush's first term a disaster and his second term a success.
The first term included the missed opportunity of the tax cuts (cuts instead of reform, no attempt at deficit reduction), the disastrous entry into Iraq, the ill-considered compassionate conservative junkets (NCLB, Plan D), and the wild expansion of the U.S. security apparatus (war on terror) -- beyond the wild expansion that happened under Clinton(war on drugs), and the foundation for the further wild expansion under Obama.
In Bush's second term he backed the surge. It was a singular act of political bravery. The surge could not make up for the folly of the initial invasion, but Bush recognized, as the Democrats did not, that there was no easy way out. Bush also recognized, as Obama did not, that the main course for the future of the middle east lay in Iraq, not Afghanistan. Iran laughs at your drones, Mr. Obama.
All the other supposedly bad things that undermined Bush's second term are either trivial (Kurik? Plame?), good (no grand deals on social security or immigration), or beyond the power of the presidency to prevent (Katrina, financial crisis).
Actually, I'd guess many black folks would vote for a white Democrat, many perhaps even if the opposition were a black Republican.
Young people tend to look up to their elders and heroes, if they vote at all, and older people were once younger people doing the same, even if their vote their interests with crueler neutrality as they age.
Tougher to find any elders and heroes amongst black folks without some recognition of civil rights and the desire for basic equality under the law and access to opportunity.
ARM,
Well, that was the comparator. Thanks, Barack!
I'd have to dig out my Arrested Development DVDs to check, but my recollection is that George Bluth only served one term, which was eventually commuted to house arrest. Still, an apt comparison.
I read the poll: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/postabc-poll-obama-republicans-health-care/2013/12/17/42d46190-66d8-11e3-997b-9213b17dac97_page.html
There are some really scary numbers there for Democrats1. (Hurray!)
BUTH !*!*!???
"Nixon's low approval ratings were likely helped by the fact that we were entering a long and painful recession and oil shortage--the worst economy since WWII--and the people tend to let that reflect on the President."
Actually, I think two factors were more important. First, the left never forgave Nixon for Alger Hiss. They still can't admit he was a communist, like Nixon (and horrors! McCarthy) said.
Second, Republicans turned on Nixon, which Democrats won't do to Obama just like they rallied around Clinton.
The recession began after Nixon left office, and maybe because the Democrats swept Congress in 74.
ARM,
I get it, it is the old defense of 'Bush did it too' as if that makes everything alright.
Time to fire that irritating proofreader?
Obama can't hold a candle to George Bush.
First term, second term, his life, his works, his hobbies.
No, Obama is a midget.
Point #3. "First-term success haunted the second term."
Really? What might those successes be for the Big O?
The economy? The unemployment rate with it's falsified numbers? NSA spying? Closing Gitmo? The IRS scandal?
The only success the commie pinko left can point to is the Unaffordable and Unachievable Care ACT. Oh what a Christmas thta's going to be.
Rusty said...
Who the hell was Buth?
Althouse is channeling Barney Frank.
We knew it was inevitable.
Ron Fournier voted for Barack Obama.
"Puth Puth in the Buth"
Muthique, 1978.
The soft bigotry of low expectations
In fairness to the headline writer, there's an implicit context of "politically"/"in the context of politicians".
If there's a problem, it's the focus on politics-qua-politics, but that's simply endemic to the industry.
Missing the point, Obama is a cool black guy and thus immune from responsibility for anything.
I'd have to dig out my Arrested Development DVDs to check, but my recollection is that George Bluth only served one term, which was eventually commuted to house arrest. Still, an apt comparison.
I'd have to dig out the online versions as I don't own the DVDs, but I thought George Bluth "switched" places in jail with his identical twin brother (who also happened to be nailing his wife), and then hid out in the attic of his son's model home.
There's always money in the banana stand.
"Buth" was such an obscure reference, I confess I had to look him up.
"...Buth Diu was appointed to the third seat reserved for a southerner in the cabinet. He was given the position of Minister of Animal Resources."
The parallels are all the more fascinating for their subtlelty. And now, we may finally see what a second Buth term might have accomplished!
Poll Question: Who do you think is more responsible for the country's current economic problems - (Barack Obama) or (George W. Bush)?
Obama: 38%
Bush: 50%
Incredible.
raf said: "Everyone DOES know that Nixon was never impeached, right?"
You are correct in the popular parlance, but as to federal officers, "impeachment" is the voting of charges by the House. Removal from office would occur only after a Senate trial. In the case of Nixon, the House did vote charges. Nixon resigned before a trial in the Senate.
It's all about the PRESIDENT, as it always is, because he's incredibly powerful.
You just don't like this one.
"You just don't like this one."
Plus, he lies a lot.
"t's all about the PRESIDENT, as it always is, because he's incredibly powerful.
You just don't like this one."
Correct so that makes me a racist.
I wasn't that fond of Bush but they were light years ahead of this one. Even Clinton was teachable.
@Pettifogger: The House did not vote charges against Nixon, though they were on the way toward doing so.
No, Obama will be fine.
Obama takes a 17 day vacation to Hawaii while regular Americans suffer at home and Syrians and other die by the thousands owing to his fecklessness.
Poll Question: Who do you think is more responsible for the country's current economic problems - (Barack Obama) or (George W. Bush)?
Obama: 38%
Bush: 50%
Incredible.
More Democrats than Republicans (self-identified) were surveyed, as per usual.
Why even ask that question?
MadisonMan said...
Poll Question: Who do you think is more responsible for the country's current economic problems - (Barack Obama) or (George W. Bush)?
Obama: 38%
Bush: 50%
Incredible.
More Democrats than Republicans (self-identified) were surveyed, as per usual.
Why even ask that question?
12/17/13, 4:01 PM
There is no cure for stupid.
I for one would rather have Bush's unemployment and growth rate at this comparable point in term when comparing administrations. My fear is that this administration's policies and incompetence will also result in a Bush final year meltdown.
People over-complicate things. Obama is in trouble because people are beginning to see what Obamacare really is, rather than just the beautiful promises that sold it. The faulty website helped to highlight the problems, but it didn't cause them. There have been no other accomplishments of this administration, so there's no buffer. That's it.
If anyone cares to figure out what went wrong with Bush's second term, go right ahead. You can safely ignore the 9 items in the article.
Sorry about the typo. I was correcting a typo using the iPad, which I find very hard to do, not that it's an excuse.
What's the Old Irish saying. "Different people but still the same boss."
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