Obama, Aloof and Unable to Manage, Is Dangerous

It's Halloween. So what better topic than Barack Obama. A new October 22-28 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows his approval ratings at an all-time low - 42% generally approve of the President's job performance, while 51% disapprove. That's a loss of 5% from early October. And for the first time in the Obama poll history, Obama's personal approval ratings are lower than his disapproval ratings. The poll showed that 41% approve of him on a personal level and 45% disapprove."Personally and politically, the public's assessment is two thumbs down," Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart told NBC. Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff conducted the survey. The pollsters told NBC that no single issue is responsible for the declines. Rather, a combination of the NSA spying scandal, questions over his "red line" comment on attacking Syria, the government shutdown, and problems with the Obamacare website rollout all played a role. The poll also showed that Obamacare itself also slipping in approval along with the Republican Party and Congress as a whole - 37% now view the healthcare law as a good idea, with 47% opposing it. The previous poll showed 38% in favor and 43% against. The White House and congressional Democrats had been touting the law's growing popularity as critics blasted the troubled rollout. But in a separate question, 40% say they are now less confident about Obamacare after learning more about it. Only 9% are more confident. Exactly 50% said there has been no change in their thinking. ~~~~~ Barack Obama used computer-based campaign techniques and his agreeable public image to literally talk his way into the White House in 2008. And, since most US Presidents are re-elected, Obama was, too, in 2012. But, as President Obama was campaigning in the late summer and fall of 2012, several affairs very negztive for Obama and his White House were circling the Washington political scene. The first was the Benghazi attack, in which the US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three of his staff were assassinated in a terrorist attack that Obama and his partisans tried to sell to America as a march against an anti-Moslem film that was suddenly taken over by terrorists. America is still waiting for Obama and his then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to comply with various requests of Congress to tell it what really happened in Benghazi on the night of September 11, 2012, and why repeated calls for bolstered security were ignored by Clinton, and also why Obama went to bed in the White House, leaving underlings to save his Ambassador without his sending in CIA or nearby Special Operations security operatives or even calling the Libyan president to ask for assistance. Obama's spin tactics held off the public until after the election, but Benghazi is an open sore that he has never healed or patched over. Next came the IRS affair, when it surfaced after the 2012 presidential election that conservative political groups were harassed by the IRS and prevented from working for Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate. This illegal use of the IRS was the political dirty trick tactic that may well have cost Romney the election and pushed Obama to a questionable victory. Then came the current NSA spying scandal, in which Obama - rather than keeping his campaign promises to have an open presidency and not to engage in what he called "unacceptable" Bush tactics as part of the war on terror, a term he banished from the White House vocabulary - actually expanded the eavesdropping and phone tapping to new heights. These very negative elements, combined with Obamacare, which we have often discussed, have served to reduce Barack Obama to a President isolated from the majority of Americans, who also feel strongly that he has severely damaged America's reputation in the world, especially in the Middle East, where many accuse him of favoring the Moslem Brotherhood over America's traditional allies - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel. ~~~~~ Dear readers, it is not a comforting picture and Obama has another 1180 days in office. What greater damage he may do to America is the question helping to drive his job performance ratings lower and lower. As David Gergen, former advisor to Clinton and both Bushes and currently head of the Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy, said last night on CNN -- Barack Obama knows how to get elected. He does not know how to govern. His White House is full of amateurs who cannot manage a presidency and Obama himself is aloof and not engaged on a daily basis. ~~~~~ An extremely dangerous disaster.