Signs of failure emerging in Obama's poll numbers

Signs of failure emerging in Obama's poll numbers Hugh Hewitt Columnists Washington Examiner
Signs of failure emerging in Obama's poll numbers By: Hugh Hewitt

Gallup is the gold standard when it comes to approval ratings for presidents, so last week's assessment by the polling company of the president's standing in the public surely shocked the Obama loyalists who thought that the battle over the debt ceiling had allowed their guy to shine.

Certainly he had every chance to make his case to the public, with press conference after press conference and a prime-time speech to boot.

The president wasn't pushed hard by his pals in the press room in the Q&A, and the coverage of the crisis was almost absurdly pro-Obama. But still his numbers plummeted to the lowest level of his rapidly collapsing presidency.

That only 13 percent of Republicans applauded Obama wasn't all that surprising. The president's harsh and hyperpartisan rhetoric had guaranteed that the GOP faithful would give up on the man from "Hope and Change."

The underwhelming showing among Democrats where 72 percent support the president was something of a shock. Gallup didn't provide the breakdown of African-American Democrats versus all others, but that underwhelming 72 percent has to be lifted by his still high standing in the black community.

It was the verdict of the independents, however, that really must have rocked the White House and the Chicago gang that had so carefully crafted the president's endless loop of buzz words about "balance," "compromise" and the "adult in the room": Only 34 percent of these voters support the president.

Thirty-four percent of the great middle-of-the-road-undecided-open-to-the-best-man-and-argument Americans. To quote the Bob Dylan song, "Things have changed."

These numbers rolled in before the public got word that the economic growth rate had dipped again to a scarcely visible 1.3 percent in the last quarter.

And that headline arrived just as Merck announced another 13,000 layoffs, and the Dow Jones industrial average dropped 4.2 percent, the S&P 500 3.92 percent and the Nasdaq 3.58 percent in the markets' worst week in a year.

What's not to like about the Nobel laureate, except perhaps the Libyan fiasco, the continued nightmare of Obamacare's rollout, and an exploding "Fast and Furious" scandal?

Imagine if the Republican message machine had been at all competent for the months of June and July as the president pushed the country toward the fiscal cliff and demanded killer tax increases from an already reeling private sector.

The president's political prospects are now so bleak as to tempt him to start the two-minute drill 15 months out from the election. Why wouldn't he unveil an "October-surprise-of-the-month" club. He has proven himself willing to say anything, so why wouldn't he start doing the unthinkable?

Obama has already broken with long-standing precedent by ordering his Department of Justice not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, even though no Circuit Court of Appeals has yet called into question the law's constitutional foundation.

He has already floated an assault on the First Amendment and federal contracting law with the idea of an executive order compelling government suppliers to abandon their rights under Citizens United without any statutory authority for the move.

The president threatened seniors with a Social Security cutoff not once but twice, and he fairly invited a market panic in his now infamous Friday night tantrum in the White House press room.

So why wouldn't a desperate president try the absurd 14th Amendment argument floated by the hard left that he could move the debt limit by himself?

Why wouldn't he use a collision with the debt limit to direct his Treasury secretary to pay everyone but the seniors and the military and then blame the GOP? That's the Chicago Way.

What the Gallup numbers illuminated, with a glare so bright that not even all the mainstream media can miss it, is that the public has taken the measure of the president and his economic and foreign policies.

The Republicans could conceivably put the president back in the game by nominating a candidate that scares the middle even more than the president does, but that will take some doing.

The really interesting question is where would his numbers be if the special operators hadn't killed Osama bin Laden? That and the other query: How low can those numbers go?

Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/07/signs-failure-emerging-obamas-poll-numbers#ixzz1To3GEfSS