Obama's "Moment" Has Arrived

There was an interesting article in the Financial Times the other day. To sum up the article, here is the money quote: “When leadership fails, people stop following. It appears in the sixth year of the Barack Obama presidency, that moment has arrived.” Yep.

According to the author, the American public has now had a long, hard look at the “talent” inside the White House and they have begun to “despair for real leadership and competence.” This is based on a recent CNN poll which found that Obama doesn’t gain a majority of support any of twelve issues surveyed. In fact, the closest he comes to having public support is on environmentalism, which is normally an overwhelming Democratic issue. Here that's his best issue because his disapproval only leads by 4% -- 49% to 45%. Interestingly, when it comes to healthcare, Obama’s key issue, his disapproval swamps his approval 63% to 36%. Similarly, on economic issues, his disapproval crushes his approval 61% to 38%.

Even more to the point, the author cites to an analysis by the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza, who says that Obama’s polling problems are the result of a lack of competence. He notes that “the core of Obama’s appeal [in 2008] was the idea that he would restore competence back to the White House after President George W. Bush’s eight years.” But as the scandals keep piling up (the real ones, not the talk radio ones), it has become glaringly apparent that Obama is just as incompetent as Bush, if not worse. In support of this analysis, Cillizza cites to a Pew poll which asked the public about Obama’s “executive competence.” In February of 2009, the poll found that Obama was overwhelmingly seen as competent by 70% to 15%. By December 2013, this number had fallen to base-support level of 43% to 51%. In other words, the only people who still see Obama as competent are base Democrats.

According to the Financial Times, this is the result of three specific scandals. First is Obamacare, where the rollout of the website was a disaster even after 42 months and $400 million spent. Moreover, Obama promised everyone they could keep their plans, and yet millions got cancelled and millions more lost their doctors. And how did Obama respond? Did he fix anything? Did he fire those responsible? No. He proclaimed himself madder than anyone else and then said Sebelius had done a great job.

Then you have the VA scandal. This is an issue Obama himself campaigned on. He demanded more money and called Bush incompetent and uncaring. Congress then gave Obama $235 billion more over the next five years and what did that get us? Even worse incompetence... plus lies. Whistleblowers showed up to say that the VA was lying about waiting lists (an internal investigation found that 64% of facilities had engaged in wait-list fraud and 13% of schedulers had actually been trained in how to commit it), had falsified records to hide the truth, and that dozen of veterans died while being denied medical attention.

Obama responded by declaring himself madder than anyone else and did nothing until Secretary Shinseki decided he couldn’t take the heat anymore and resigned.

The third they identify is a national security catchall, which is basically the trade of five Taliban commanders for this dipsh*t deserter. As this story unfolded, Obama kept denying the truth, offering new reasons why this trade had to be made, and swearing he would do it again and again. Yet, at every phase, the White House story has fallen apart. And Obama’s attempt to defend himself by attacking the critics have blowup on him since the critics are the soldiers who did their best to save this skunk. Even the Democrats are freaking out about this one.

The key thread in each of these instances is that Obama appears clueless. Obama makes some claim about something being important to him. He appoints incompetent people to handle the issue. He makes some unicorn-like speech that fails to address reality and makes promises he can’t keep. Everything blows up when reality strikes. Then Obama acts indignant, does his “tell me whose ass to kick” routine, and attacks everyone else for somethingsomethingpoliticizedsomethingsomething, and he promptly retreats from the camera and responsibility.

That’s not competent leadership, not by any stretch.

Now, I would add a few other things that have gone wrong for Obama. Let’s start with Russia. Obama made political hay throughout his administration by accusing the Republicans of being hopelessly lost in the past when it comes to Russia. To much fanfare and self-congratulations, he pushed the reset button and ushered in a new age of friendship. But not only have recent events proven that to have been foolish and delusional, but Putin has gotten away with waving his tiny Russian pecker in Obama’s face for months.

Obama’s economic policy is impotent. He’s fired trillions of dollars in stimulus at the economy and all he’s gotten for it was grief, like when everyone mocked him for claiming that he “saved or created” jobs. There was an announcement this week that we’ve finally recovered all the jobs lost since 2008 this week. So it took Obama’s vaunted economic policy six years to get back to zero – and even then, this isn’t zero because these jobs have lower income and no jobs were created for all the people who came of age over the past six years. Add to this that millions of Americans are still upside down on their home mortgages. Consumer debt is at record levels. Unemployment is still higher than at any point under Bush. And work force participation is at the lowest level in history. Yet, Obama has stopped talking about his plan because he doesn’t have one. Basically, he tried one thing in 2009... it didn’t work... and he quit.

Consider his political timing too. Obama’s timing is so bad that it almost seems like he’s trying to undermine his own party during the elections. His release of his coal-killing rules came out the day after Mitch McConnell won the primary in Kentucky and liberal news sites are screaming that Obama just handed the Republicans that seat. He's done similar things repeatedly because he just doesn't think about the effects of his actions on others, even his friends.

This is all bad for Obama because this is where his legacy is being written. And what his legacy is morphing into is our first “lazy quitter” President. What you have is a President who has demonstrated that he doesn’t hire competent people, he doesn’t monitor them, he makes unrealistic promises, he never admits mistakes, he never learns from his mistakes, he doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions, he’s impotent when faced with someone of equal stature who won’t surrender, and he walks away when things go wrong. There’s not much there to love. And the polls are reflecting that.