The Beauty Contest President

Democrats and their allies in the media like to tout the fact that Pres. Barack Obama enjoys unprecedented support after the first 100 days in office. But do the polls bear that out?

A Gallup poll taken April 26 - 28 gives the President an approval rating of 63%. Receiving support from two-thirds of the American people is an achievement, indeed.

However, a Quinnipiac poll taken the prior week shows that by the exact same margin of people who approve of the President (63%), Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Even a similar poll by the ultra-leftist Daily Kos shows that better than half the people think that we're headed towards the waterfall backwards in a rowboat.

So we have a situation where 63% of the people basically like Pres. Obama, and 63% also think that his whirlwind first 100 days of centralizing authority in Washington, nationalizing two important economic sectors (autos and banks), and reversing the Bush Doctrine on terrorism is leading the country in the wrong direction.

Maybe the deciding poll comes in the people's judgment on Congress. In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, only 30% of those polled approved of the job that Congress is doing.

So let's not kid ourselves that the President's personal magnetism is somehow an endorsement of his radical left policies currently being executed by Congress. While Pres. Obama may be personally popular, people still fear where he's leading us and have little to no faith that Congress can do the job that needs to be done.

In the meantime the President maintains his personal poll numbers with a constant stream of empty platitudes on subjects like banking, health care, intelligence, the military, and the auto industry--all subjects on which he has little experience and knows less.

Perhaps his high poll numbers are a result of not being tested by the media, unlike his predecessors. As Dennis Miller pointed out on Fox News the other night after another softball White House press conference, we live in a peculiar time in history when a Miss USA contestant can lose a beauty pageant saying the same thing that Barack Obama said in winning the Presidency.


Just thought you might like to know.