Friday, August 1, 2014
How an American President Becomes a Footnote in History
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when an American President becomes a footnote in history. With Barack Obama, it may be this week when his final positive approval ratings collapsed in the minds of his fellow citizens. Foreign policy used to be a bright spot in Americans' opinion of President Obama. That is over. Associated Press-GfK polling released yesterday found majority discontent with the President's handling of world events. And the pollsters concluded that Obama's handling of Hamas could benefit Republicans' target of winning control of Congress in the fall. Obama's positive ratings about how he has dealt with Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gaza crisis are all in the 38% to 42% positive range, with 57% to 60% disapproving of his handling of those matters. Overall, 43% of Americans approve of the President's handling of foreign relations in the new poll, while 40% approve of how he's doing his job overall. AP-GfK polls in March and May show a similar picture. The latest polls were taken after Russia seized upon an uprising in Ukraine to annex the Crimean Peninsula, and they marked a significant drop from January's 49% positive foreign policy rating. In September 2012, shortly before Obama's re-election, it was 57%. ~~~~~ Dear readers, for reasons that I find hard to understand, Americans have stuck with President Obama's increasingly inept management of foreign policy. They didn't bolt when his Syria red line turned out to be invisible. They held on when he began to pay Iran to talk about its nuclear enrichment program, with little indication of the Ayatollah's softening of his hard line against America, Israel and the West. They turned the other cheek when they saw his inaction give Vladimir Putin the winning hand in Ukraine. They flinched but stayed with him when his abandonment of Iraq led to the collapse of its fledgling efforts at self government. They started to waver when he said he was ready to commit the Iraq error in Afghanistan. But, they began to speak out when he was weak in his support of Israel when it was attacked by a bombardment by Hamas terrorists. And, this past week, America bailed out. The combined weight of all Obama's foreign policy errors finally hit home. They rejected his foreign policies in even greater numbers than they had already rejected Obamacare and non-existent job creation and a rapidly falling standard of living and a presidency ignoring the Constitution to make laws that never passed tbrough the congressional approval process required by the Constitution. That, dear readers, is how a President becomes a footnote in history.
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Unlike former President Bill Clinton's shift to the center during his tenure, Obama's backroom successes and polarizing failures will only result in a perpetual downturn in his approval rating.
ReplyDeleteThe president has gone from being "a big deal" to eliciting utter contempt and disrespect for the highest office in the land. His liberal colleagues angrily mutter, "Ignore the president."
Like a good compromise, a good president, too, is something that everybody can recognize. Years from now, recognition of Obama as a transcendent president will long be forgotten, and the era of the man who was to save America will be nothing more than a footnote in history.
Obama has traveled what was to be a road of everlasting fame and recognition … Instead of the road seldom traveled by US presidents.
Obama seems to have the attitude of a man that is akin to abandoning his destination because the fastest freeway was closed for construction and the only option was some winding road that would take him hours out of his way.
DeleteObama unaided has set the course that will leave his legacy as nothing more than a footnote in American presidential history. For all of the bluster and glory, for all of the pomp and circumstance, and yes, for all of the anticipated hope and the promised change, the whirlwind of hype and expectation surrounding the president a mere 5.5 years earlier has virtually dissolved.
ReplyDeleteHe was the man ordained to save this country from his predecessor's failures. He was the man who would end the war in Iraq, finish the war in Afghanistan, and shut down the prison at Guantánamo Bay. He was the man charged with rescuing the faltering American economy. He was the man who would usher in a post-racial era in an allegedly inherently racist American society. Each and every one a failure from start to finish. And he was the man who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based not on tangible accomplishment, but simply upon these very expectations.
On all of these accounts (and many more), President Obama has been and will remain a striking failure.
Most presidents have a legacy. It’s usually an event or cultural movement that defines not only a presidency, but an era in history. Lincoln had the Civil War, tasked with holding the nation together. Teddy Roosevelt transitioned the nation from a continental power to an imperial one. Hoover failed to deal with the 1929 Stock Market Crash, and subsequently the beginnings of the Great Depression.
ReplyDeleteWhat will Obama’s be (if he ever has one)? Failing at every Foreign Policy turn, aiding & abetting the loss of the Middle East, a financial turnaround that cost us our financial stability and failed anyhow, failure to support the Constitution, Cabinet secretaries that totally forgot about the rule of law, invasion of citizens privacy, starting a new Cold War, destroying the US job market, failure to enforce immigration controls, etc.?
We have had 44 Presidential Administrations, but only 43 men have served as President – Cleveland served in 2 non-consecutive terms (#22 & 24) – but no matter the position that each hold in the rankings of those very few there is a quality that has been particularly important in determining their spot … CHOICES!
ReplyDeleteThe CHOICES they have made in leadership honesty, leadership goals, leadership direction all very important. But their personal CHOICES of the people chosen to put their goals and agenda in place and carried through to culmination really start their standings history.
Lincoln for his daily involvement in the war he so hated and was determined to see the Union preserved. And Washington & Jefferson’s for the strength of their convictions and foresightedness. Perhaps the most qualified president of the modern era, Nixon (a great foreign policy mind) for his bad choice to buffer a couple bad men. And certainly Reagan – the right person at the right time, making the right decisions.
But Obama maybe had the greatest opportunity to write a whole new chapter in the legacy book and has squandered it all due to the poor choice of people he elected to put into power. But that choice that all these honored men made/make is and always will be the substance of their administrations and reflective of who they really were/are.
It’s the personality of their presidency …, it’s their soul. And I’m not convinced that Obama ever had what “We the People” wanted.
The men who are the footnotes of the American Presidency are so because they were/are as empty as "holograms". granted every list has to have someone at the top and someone at the bottom. But some cellar dwellers tried and simply came up short.
DeleteObama has tried not to build but destroy. He is nothing and that's how he sees others and the world as nothing special.., nothing worth any positive effort on his part. So he is number 44 on a list of 43.
There is a common thread among past world leaders (who are of questionable intent or desired aim)that find themselves if at best only a footnote in history or at worst who are in the tyrannical listings of leadership… THEIR COMPLETE DISTRUST OF THE PEOPLE THAT THEY HAD ELECTED TO BE THEIR INNER CIRCLE OF ADVISORS. Losers seem to always want to go it alone, even at the cost of their own predestined failure.
ReplyDelete