According to Gallup, Barack Obama’s approval rating has gone up to 65% . At the same time, according to Rasmussen, only 37% of Americans think our country is headed in the right direction. In other words, the man at the tiller is great, but he’s drunk. It’s as if we’re suffering from a national cognitive disorder.
Most of this disorder is media induced, because the media’s love affair with Obama persists beyond rationality, though you can see the first glimmerings of a crack in some quarters – even in the New York Times whose Caucus blog is pointing out that only 5 percent (!) of the $787 billion stimulus has been spent (despite a different report the administration.) Meanwhile Jake Tapper at ABC has other complaints.
So how long will America heart Obama? Well, as one wag once said, it’s the economy, stupid. If he’s right, if I were Obama, I’d be worried. My prediction is the President has about three months left of his afterglow. If things aren’t looking perkier around Labor Day, look for that cognitive disorder to be cured and Obama’s numbers to tank. Then we’ll be in the real world – only it will be a real world that few will enjoy.
On the other hand, FDR’s economic prescriptions did little good during the Depression. The crash of ’37 was worse than the crash of ’29. And yet he kept getting reelected. Cognitive disorders have a way of persisting.
UPDATE: Persisting… and metastasizing. From Pravda: It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
One thing to keep in mind, Roger: Today with electronic trading and debt and equity markets integrally connected as they are, it won’t take quite as long for things to crash again, as in the space between ’29 and ’37. The financial markets and the tweaking The Fed and Obama administration are doing will surely be fascinating to watch in the months ahead.
“It’s as if we’re suffering from a national cognitive disorder.”
We have been experiencing a national cognitive disorder ever since Obama threw his hat into the ring for the privilege to reside in the White House. Guilt tripped whites are wary of going against a ”man of color.” It’s just that simple. That is why it’s best to look at their overall view of Obama’s positions. In this regard, these same people are increasingly voicing their displeasure. And this is what’s starting to scare Democratic Party politicians. They normally can’t take advantage of the race card protections afforded to Obama.
I don’t believe all the polls. They are so inconsistent and contradictory.
The other day I saw a poll, at CNN I think, that showed Bush and Cheney’s numbers were actually better now than they were months ago. Bush was at 41%. Why?
I think that people want to give the new guy a chance and so they save most their ire for Congress. However, I also think that Obama has a lot more critics now than he did just a month ago. And I do not ever remember seeing a President with these kinds of negatives this early. I never remember seeing a president whose policies can inspire hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets in protests within months of his taking office. It just does not feel right to me somehow.
Even if the economy is still tanking 6 months out, even if national unemployment crosses the 10% mark, I don’t expect Obama’s popularity to suffer much, if at all. There are now two Americas, much more starkly divided than was the case 50 or even 25 years ago. Obama is king to those who resent (a very mild term relative to the truth) whitey. The resenters: blacks, hispanics and single white women (especially single white mothers) will stick with Obama no matter what. Payback trumps everything. When you combine those three constituencies with the committed left on the campuses, in the chattering classes and in the boardrooms of our socialized corporations, there is an almost unbreakable majority wedded to his racist/marxist poison.
I hope you’re right about Americans waking from their dream. But after a lifetime of deep respect for my fellow citizens, last year’s display of utter surrender to media/entertainment/leftist opinionmaking complex mythmaking, my confidence in them is shattered. It looks to me like Americans have surrendered their ability to analyze and think critically. I feel like I am living with a population of sleepwalkers, secure in their dream.
Sure, part of this is our “education” institutions at work, but I think far too many Americans seem to be completely credulous to what their familiar cluster of “news”/entertainment sources tell them is real, important and true. Those sources will not be changing their tune any time soon, because they are now uttelry corrupt and degenerate. I don’t see Americans waking up to find they worshiped a hollow man any time soon, because the media/opinion complex will blame every inadequacy and failure on anything but The One. And Americans have demonstrated their complete acquiesence.
ricpic:
I am a white woman and I kind of resent the whole white women suck up to Obama shtick.
Me too, Terrye. Let them speak for themselves. No body speaks for me but me. This is spoken as a single, white Mom.
Another difference is that in the early 30′s the protestors taking to the street wanted a lot more government spending, not a lot less.
5. Victor Erimita:
On the money. JFK, our firs Catholic president, whose mannerisms and camera poses Obama consciously mimics remains much loved and revered in popular American memory despite a dismal and even dangerous performance as chief executive.
Obama’s place in history is assured and he knows it. The country may go down the tubes but he will be remembered as a great president.
I agree about the race factor. I suspect a segment pf the population over a certain age who do not have pur host’s civil rights credentials will never say a bad word about Obama.
I also think that in addition to effecting perceptions, the media onslaught may be effecting the willingness of the fainthearted to express a candid opinion. I would like to see someone use the methods social scientists use when a topic itself is taboo. Asking are you racist doesn’t get much information so the questions have to be varients of one’s perceptions of neighbors’ attitudes or community standards. For example the poll question here might be “Gallup reports that 65% of registered voters find President Obama is going a good or excellent job in office. Do you think that number is about right? Too high? Too low?
On a positive note, I’m old, and I don’t have any grandkids.
Obama still has plenty of room to mess up foreign policy. I don’t know how many more apologies Americans will stand for.
The disconnect is that a lot of people still like Obama, and he comes across as a likable guy in many respects. The wrong direction numbers reflect people who are unemployed and those worried about becoming unemployed and the sense that long time institutions are crumbling. No matter how much people feel that GM and Chrysler (to take two examples) are getting what’s coming to them, it is troubling that icons like these are corroding before our very eyes.
Obama is being given a wide berth at this point, because those who voted for him cannot bear the idea he could fail. The reality based community will milk the dream that Obama is simply stuck cleaning up after Bush and so the current problems are not his fault.
Obama will own this economy at some point (Labor Day might be a good marker but it could go on longer than that). He continues to make outrageous promises of economic recovery. I suspect there will be some relatively small but concrete example of how wrong headed his policies are, but we won’t see that for a while. I think the old commie maxim could be paraphrased here: a particular casualty of the economy will serve as an example of a tragedy; many millions will merely be a statistic. The problems with Obama’s economic “solutions” are currently too abstract for people to appreciate.
Have courage. Remember what was said about Sickles’ charge at Gettysburg: “Wait awhile — he’ll come tumblin’ back…”
Roger, the cognitive disconnect is because he is affirming what many wish to believe; the teabagging media is not really to blame, nor are people unaware of the farce, many just support him to affirm themselves. Keep on speaking truth to farce, the people will come to their senses eventually.
These people that worship the moonbat Messiah are seriously twisted. Indeed I believe there is NO hope. They are like apostates of America. They are drinking some serious yoo hoo and choking on twinkees while Nero-tano and these leftist fascists are destroying this once great nation. I dont know what to say or do, except say: “The musics over, turn out the lights”
This is NOT YOUR America kids.
Hey Roger,
Glad you brought this topic up. I’ve been wondering about it myself for quite some time now.
I agree with both ricpic and Barry. The people who elected Obama did so without any thought about the economy. Naive students turned out because they wanted us to be liked in Europe and their professors had convinced them we were not much better than Nazis.
Like voters in Michigan and California, who continue to elect worthless politicians, the people who voted for Obama have too much emotional investment in him to ever admit they made a huge mistake. I mean, what will you do with the Obama t-shirt?
The economy will continue to get bad. It will never be attributed to Obama. His supporters view it as a problem that Bush created and now the poor Messiah must deal with the aftermath as things continue to crash down.
The Bay of Pigs didn’t hurt Kennedy. He would have been re-elected in a landslide. I doubt even a foreign policy disaster will reduce Obama’s poll numbers. Sorry, we’ll have him for the full 8 years even if there is 25% unemployment in the USA and Israel and South Korea are burned out cinders.
I think our only hope is to elected a new Congress that can block most of his initiatives. But then, remember Michigan and California. Pelosi and Boxer aren’t going anywhere either.
Beam me up Scotty!
“The people who elected Obama did so without any thought about the economy.”
There are many Obama supporters like Megan McArdle who intellectual disagree with his economic principles. They apparently have too much invested in the myth. Logically speaking, Obama should not be able to gain the support of even one libertarian inclined individual—unless abortion and the other cultural war issues are their first, last,and foremost priorities.
David Levavi:
I am not so sure about that. I think it remains to be seen if Obama will go down as a great president or a disaster.
He can only blame Bush for so long. For one thing by the next election people will have been looking at people like Pelosi and Reid for years. Democrats got the undivided government they wanted and with that will eventually come responsibility.
The truth is the economy was in pretty good shape for most of the time that Bush was president and it just might be that those years will become the good old days.
David:
Megan annoys me. Just what exactly did she think she was getting?
“Megan annoys me. Just what exactly did she think she was getting?”
Megan McArdle is a woman who is roughly 34 years old, never married, and childless. She is very secular! It has dawned on me only recently that such people innately seek an “anti-Christ” of one sort or another. They are the similar to those of the past who adored Stalin, Mao, or Hitler. Obama serves as something of a god to the secular “elites.”
McArdle has also written an hysterical attack on the opponents of Sonia Sotomayor. It is the weirdest piece that I’ve ever seen her write. Bu all rights, McArdle should adamantly be against this appointment. And yet, she appears to have drunk the kool-aid.
We are in a pre-revolutionary situation. Obama is the apotheosis of special interest politics, the dominant form of politics practiced by every President since Roosevelt. He’s pushing it to an absurd limit that can’t be sustained. No particular special interest group can limit it’s power grab because it’s interests are limited to what that group wants. And that is going to ram up against other power groups favored by the administration. This country is heading for an epic crash. And then revolution. I don’t think that Obama will last until 2012. The social dislocations will be too violent for that.
I was just writing this morning about that Pravda piece. While it’s markedly Un-PC in parts, I find it amazing that a Pravda writer would be lamenting the decline in capitalism in America! My, we are “living in interesting times”, aren’t we?
As for Obama, much of America still seems in the midst of a wild party, unaware of just how intoxicated they are, but morning will come and the hangover will be enormous. As to when they look over and see who’s in bed next to them, well, the reaction won’t be pretty.
I agree with Pops in Vienna that the voters who elected Obama have too much invested in the symbolism to ever come to their senses. It will be similar to what a caller to Dennis Prager described one time recently. He grew up in the Soviet Union and can remember people saying, “If only Comrade Stalin knew about this, he would…” Obama is a symbol of the baby boom generation forgiving themselves for the racism of their childhood. It has nothing to do with reality.
“Obama is a symbol of the baby boom generation forgiving themselves for the racism of their childhood.” Perhaps more accurately “… forgiving themselves for the White Skin Privilege” of their childhood.” Few of the boomers were themselves really racist. It’s all a game of imagination. So, indeed, as you say “It has nothing to do with reality.”
I can remember when Bush had a 90% approval rating. I can even remember when Nixon absolutely destroyed the opposition.
All presidents inherit problems, and I am sure that Obama’s little minions will hang on to the idea that Obama inherited the economy and it is all Bush’s fault…but I just do not think that will last forever. Bush inherited Saddam and AlQaida too, people only gave him so much slack. I am not saying that everyone will turn on Obama, but I think there is a pretty good chance that people will begin to turn on him.
By the way, Kennedy did not have great numbers and it is not at all a sure thing that he would have been reelected. Kennedy was a lot more popular after he was shot. I don’t mean that to be disrepectful or anything, but I think that it is a mistake to assume that Kennedy was much loved by everyone. He was not.
That sounds about right, Terrye. JFK’s approval ratings were somewhere in the 40s when he got shot, and then in the 70s right after he died. Reelection was likely but not a sure thing at the time, which is why he was in Dallas in the first place.
I got 250 dollars of 5%? So if the Feds spent all of the money I should expect 5 thousand dollars? Dang, bring it on!
19. Terrye:
I liked George Bush. Still do. And the whole Cheney clan. I’m sixty-two and fondly remember Donald Rumsfeld as the best secretary of defense in my lifetime.
What Roger identifies as cognitive disonance is fashion. Obama is in vogue and vogue is vanity and vanity is not based on logic. Hence apparent contradiction in popular thinking. Fact is, thinking isn’t much involved.
Obama is not an individual. He stopped being an individual when he achieved the Democratic nomination. With election to the presidency he became an icon. He can do no wrong. All his sins will be forgiven and forgotten. His place in the popular American cosmology is fixed.
David:
I liked Bush too and I thought he got a raw deal, mostly from people who really know better.
I also agree that Obama is a symbol, however he might end up being a victim of his own shallow and superficial world. Those folks are not prepared to deal with real problems for any length of time. Nothing like long term unemployment or a great big fat scandal to end the dream. Or dead people.
I honestly do not think his place is fixed because these people have lost all long term memory, they have no stomach for sacrifice and they are like children…they want what they want when they want it.
We shall see.
I read an interview in Reason magazine recently with Amity Shlaes (author of “The Forgotten Man,” a new look at FDR & the New Deal), and she was posed that same question. If the economy was in the tank, how did FDR keep getting elected?
Her answer was along the lines of FDR built a base by subsidizing silver mining, which was a big money maker in several western states. The rest of the economy may have been sucking pond water, but when the federal government was paying 2 – 3 times the market price for silver, times we’re pretty good for the mine owners, who delivered the votes.
In other words, pretty much the same thing President Obama is doing with the auto industry. You can bet the UAW will deliver, and deliver huge coming Novembers.
While skimming over these posts I came to a thought about all the people who backed “your president”. Sorrows, Oprah, Celebs, Media, etc,..
Has he asked for trillions of dollars to pay back those funders, or “the people of the united states”?
Wake up people, he is not taking your money to produce a “stimulus package”..what is he doing with this money, you don’t think all the politicians are pocketing your money?? That is the issue at hand, nothing else. It very simple, follow the money.
its going into his funders pockets..am i wrong?
Firsts, big or small, are usually remembered on that account, for better or for worse.
How Barack Hussein Obama, aka Barry Soetoro, will be remembered remains to be seen. If Obama succeeds in his ardent wish to take America down, then he will most assuredly be remembered as a great president, because he will also have won the power to dictate that memory.
Any chance Obama will be remembered instead as the inveterate liar and con man he is? You bet there is! But with the current national cognitive disorder in force, it’s less likely the longer he’s in office, and pretty soon, even if we come to our senses about him, it may be too little, too late.
Now’s the time. Let’s see his birth certificate!
I can hear it already, the reflexive “Oh no, not that again!” Well, rant away, and don’t forget to roll your eyes, etc.