Six years after offering hope and change, polls show the American public has fallen out of love with their president – so where did it all go wrong?
Barack Obama romped to the presidency of the United States in 2008 on a tidal wave of ‘hope and change’. Back then, the financial crisis was raging and US troops were still engaged in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, but a fresh-faced Mr Obama brimmed with confidence.
He predicted that future generations would look back on his election and see the moment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth.”
Six years later, Mr Obama is weary and greyed and finds his job approval ratings stuck in the low-40s. This October is the 17th consecutive month in which polls show that a majority of Americans disapprove of his leadership.
With November’s mid-term elections less than a month away, even fellow Democrats won’t be seen dead with the man who once transformed their party’s fortunes. Apart from some closed-door fundraisers, Mr Obama is all but invisible on the campaign trail.
So where did it all go wrong?
It was the economy, stupid…
Since Mr Obama took office facing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, unemployment has fallen from 10pc to 6pc and American businesses have created 10 million new jobs – that’s more than Japan, Europe and every other advanced economy combined.
So why do only 39pc of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, according to YouGov? It’s because too many of those jobs are “McJobs” – that is, low-paid and part-time work that don’t leave people feeling better off.
In numerical terms, GDP has risen by 8pc since Mr Obama took office, but median household incomes are down 4pc and – unlike during the George W Bush years – there is no housing boom or easy credit make up the difference.
President Obama checks the Rose Garden for rain
Then there were healthcare reforms…that were bad for a president’s health
Elected on a wave of euphoria, Mr Obama bet the house on reforming America’s Byzantine healthcare system – quite literally as it turned out.
He succeeded in forcing the Obamacare reforms through Congress, but the payback came in the 2010 mid-term elections. The Tea Party movement was born and a fired-up Republican base took back the House of Representatives. Washington has been gridlocked pretty much ever since.
The big hurdle was the ‘individual mandate’ that forced all Americans to buy health insurance on pain of a fine. Mr Obama appeared to underestimate how little Americans, born to be free, like being mandated to do anything.
Barack Obama speaks during a rain-soaked campaign event in Virginia (AFP/GETTY)
Then came the roll-out fiasco…
Mr Obama had promised America they could go online and buy insurance “the same way you’d shop for a plane ticket on Kayak or a TV on Amazon”. In the event all they got was error messages and spinning egg timers as the Obamacare website crashed day after day.
Americans are naturally suspicious about the role of big government, and the disastrous Obamacare rollout only confirmed many in that prejudice. Suffice to say Amazon and Kayak would have filed for bankruptcy long ago if they handled their product launches like Mr Obama’s department of Health and Human Services rolled out Obamacare.
To confirm the Obama administration’s reputation for incompetence…
Like George W Bush after Hurricane Katrina, Mr Obama’s approval numbers never recovered from the sight of his flagship piece of legislation capsizing so ignominiously before it had even left the harbour.
The ship has been righted and re-floated, but with further legal challenges pending no-one is too confident of her structural integrity.
Add to that the Benghazi disaster, where Mr Obama lost his ambassador to Libya, and the on-going crisis in the administration of Veterans Affairs, and it seems many voters are no longer inclined to give Mr Obama the benefit of the doubt.
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And all this, just as everyone was getting sick of him anyway…
Call it the whip-lash effect, but as the saying goes, “nothing turns to hate so bitter as what once was love.” Having been elected on a wave of such stratospheric adulation, it was perhaps inevitable Mr Obama would disappoint more deeply.
Still, America elected to give him a second shot, and at the start of Mr Obama’s second term the nation was brimming with hopes for a grand bargain on American finances and for a bolder, more engaged President Obama.
The second honeymoon didn’t last long: from a January 2013 high of +13, the presidential ratings – the difference between those who approve or disapprove of the president – had slipped underwater by June and in November hit a rock bottom: -15. They have been gurgling along in the -10 region ever since.
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And then along comes Islamic State to blow up the Obama foreign policy doctrine…
In the past, second-term presidents facing trouble at home – think Ronald Reagan after Iran Contra, Bill Clinton after impeachment – have turned to events abroad to restore their presidential credibility. For Mr Obama, the reverse has proved true.
As a president who campaigned on ending foreign entanglements, it has been nothing short of humiliating for Mr Obama to be forced to intervene in Syria and Iraq. It didn’t help matters when he admitted in August that “we don’t have a strategy yet” for confronting Isil.
Now, two former top aides have released books criticising Mr Obama for his lack of leadership over Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the hands-off foreign policy doctrine which the president once memorably summarised as “don’t do stupid stuff”. Hillary Clinton stuck the knife in ever further: “Great nations need organising principles,” she observed, “and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organising principle.”
But there is always golf to take your mind of things…
Golf is usually a retirement option, but to many observers Mr Obama seems to have taken his early, completing nearly 200 rounds since taking office – including nearly 40 this year alone.
It’s not that the president doesn’t have a right to relax, but it wasn’t just Republicans who were angered by the sight of Mr Obama laughing and joking on a golf cart just minutes after making an announcement condemning the beheading of the journalist James Foley.
Which perhaps explains why it’s personal now…
For much of the Obama presidency, voters have tended to draw a distinction between the man and the problems faced by the nation – many of which, like high deficits, wars and unemployment, were blamed either on the George W Bush era or global factors beyond the president’s control.
It was that buffer that explained how Mr Obama broke all historical precedent and won re-election with unemployment running at nearly 8pc. While some of his policies were unpopular, a strong majority still found the president to be an “honest and trustworthy” leader.
Now those ratings too are under water, and Mr Obama is identified as part of the problem, with only 27 per cent of Americans believing that “things in the United States are heading in the right direction” according to a CBS/New York Times poll this week.
For Democrats hoping keep control of the Senate in November that’s a horrible number. The Obama love affair looks well and truly over.
Curated for the web by David Lawler
