The Disastrous First Year

by Kathleen McKinley | January 6, 2010 1:20 pm

You might have seen some whining from the left about Rasmussen’s recent poll numbers on Pres. Obama. They were busy accusing Rasmussen of actually being rightwing.

I guess they will have to add Gallup to the rightwing conspiracy:[1]

According to Gallup’s first full data set for 2010, Barack Obama starts his second year in office with the highest disapproval rating of any President since Eisenhower. Obama begins 2010 with 44% of the public disapproving of the job he’s doing as president. That’s four points higher than the next closest president (Reagan), six points higher than Bill Clinton, and 17 points higher than Jimmy Carter.

As you can see from Gallup’s graphic below, Obama also begins his second year in office with the second worst job approval rating of any president in the last 56 years.

We on the right knew that Obama was a rookie, and would be really really bad for America. But I don’t think we even expected how quickly he would bring us down. The ironic thing about Obama is that he really has done all the right things militarily. Do we remember when he allowed our sniper to take down that Somali pirate that was holding an American hostage? Sending a troop surge into Afghanistan was a surprise, but the right thing to do. The left have been simmering over their anger regarding Obama keeping rendition, warrantless wiretapping, and other terror fighting policies of the Bush administration. Those of us who live in the real world realize that the intelligence that Pres. Obama saw when he came into office must have been so disturbing that he was willing to take the anger from his own base to do the right thing. It’s things like that that bring a President to a high disapproval ratings. He does these kind of things that make his base angry, and the disastrous liberal domestic policies tick off the rest of us.

The biggest mistake that Obama has made, and it is one that will haunt his Presidency, is to focus on a health care bill that the majority of Americans are against. He focused on this while our economy is experiencing the highest unemployment in 16 years. Add to that the bloated stimulus bill, that he said was necessary to stimulate jobs, simply didn’t work.

Watching this first year of the Obama presidency is like watching someone who can’t swim being thrown in the deep end of the pool. He barely keeps his head above water. The thrashing about is painful to watch.

I was watching a recent interview with Obama and he said simply, “This is hard.” Being President is hard, and we were foolish to think that celebrity and pretty words would be enough experience to do the job. I hardly blame Obama really. I blame the Americans who were swooned by his soaring rhetoric (which he seems to have lost somehow) and voted in a man not ready for the job.

How do we start this new year? We keep fighting through the Tea Parties. We must remind the politicians in Washington (in both parties) that this is a government of the people. We educate the public on our founding principles. We elect only Representatives and Senators that understand this.

Honestly? I think things will get worse before they get better. I think we will see a sharp increase in terrorism. I think we will lose many of our brave soldiers in Afghanistan. I think the economy will not rebound soon.

BUT, we are a great country. We will get through this.