The Administration's Season of Woe

Though perhaps not experiencing the worst week of publicity this holiday season, the Obama Administration is presently hitting more than a few bumps in the road since the House's passage of the Healthcare Omnibus Bill. Between the bill's stalling in the Senate, the kerfluffle over the security breach at the White House last week, the whispering in the press of ineffective governance, Afghanistan, and the ill-timed Climate Change summit in Copenhagen, and of course the economy, the luster of early 2009 for President Obama has appeared to wear off. Perhaps with expectations set so high, it would be impossible for any presidential administration to live up to them-- regardless, benefiting from Great Expectations, the reality is falling far short, even to much of the President's base. Gallup's tracking of his approval rating in office and on specific issues is beginning to approach what Rasmussen Reports' polls (using likely voters rather than registered) began to note late this summer, what I like to call the X of Woe: Initially high "strongly favorable" polling being replaced with a higher "strongly unfavorable" polling-- meaning more respondents strongly disapprove of the President's performance than strongly approve. Gallup, though not quite at the X, has the President hovering around 50%, implying his political capital is not quite what it once was.

Meanwhile, the retirement of 2 moderate Democrats in KS-3 and TN-8 districts, both GOP leaning in voting trends, have some analysts concerned that these may be the spearpoint of a cycle of Democratic retirements -- both these incumbents were fairly safe despite their conservative districts (Tenn 8 went for McCain by double digits and Kansas 3 is...well, in Kansas) and offer Republicans strong pick-up opportunities, if more blue dog Democrats begin to peel away after this session and as primaries approach, this could very much complicate legislative matters for the remainder of this Congressional term for other Democrats in moderate to conservative districts reading the tea-leaves-- well, beyond the Alan Grayson's of the world, anyway.

The Copenhagen Climate summit has been complicated by the growing scandal stemming from "Climategate E-mails" from East Anglia University, implying academic dishonesty, blackballing of skeptics, and generally very greaseball mechanizations by leading Climate Change advocates-- red meat for the Global warming skeptics, and generally ignored by the Big 3 networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) but oddly enough, not by Jon Stewart. The blowback over this growing issue will likely reflect on any global-warming related summits in the short term, and any agreements signed on to will be tainted...

Which getting to tainted, I come to my next mishap of this past week or so for the Administration, what must have been inevitable finally took place -- a Big Speech fell kind of flat. The final (after extended deliberation and declining poll numbers-- The President's approval rating on Afghanistan was down to 35%) decision and speech on the next aspect of the Afghan War took place at West Point on Tuesday. It did not go particularly well, judging by the fact that even Democratic strategists were expressing their discomfort with it. The plan itself, the 30,000 additional troops (not popular with the anti-war left) and the time-table (not popular with the hawks) was still received lukewarm by the middle. How the war will turn out, or even the President's confidence in its prosecution (he did not use the term Victory, once in reference to either it or Iraq-- preferring milestones for Iraq-- a war largely considered won. Even though his "audience" was one of West Point cadets and members of the Armed Service) is uncertain, and I will go over my view of Afghanistan in a subsequent post-- but regardless, it did not instill confidence in these policies.

So overall, it's been a rough week for the President and his agenda-- following a perceived fruitless trip to Asia. With new unemployment figures coming out tomorrow, the economy could provide further problems-- not aided by today's job summit that did not particularly focus on creating jobs. The initial optimism that greated Obama's assumption to the office appears to have waned, and if solid accomplishments and popular policies do not begin to appear shortly, the present powers in Washington will be in serious jeopardy. The Republicans will likely not need to continually harken back to Ronald Reagan to get back into the swing of things.