Mainstream Media Fails to Connect the Dots; Polls Show Americans Have Lost Confidence in the President

President Obama continues his globetrotting adventures, trying to look--well, presidential. Meanwhile, back at home, opinion polls have started to show a disturbing trend, if you are an Obama supporter. The President continues to make healthcare the tall poll in his tent, which continues to shift precipitously to the left and away from most Americans. This has quickly eroded the base of good feelings and confidence with which voters swept him into office a year ago.  Check the numbers:

• A November CNN poll shows that 47% of Americans say the top issue facing the country is not healthcare; it's the economy. In fact, only 17% of those polled said that healthcare was their main concern.
• Following the Nov. 7 House of Representatives healthcare vote 54% of those polled said they opposed the plan. Only 45% of respondents said they favored it, according to a Rasmussen poll. 
• An NBC/Wall Street Journal p0ll taken from Oct. 22 through Oct. 29 showed that the President's personal magnetism is fading. When it comes to being honest and straight with the American people, he's dropped to 33%. Two out of every three people don't think he's being honest with us.
• In the same poll his rating for being firm and decisive--witness the waffling on Afghanistan, the constant empty warnings to Iran, and his boogie out of town last week to let Attorney General Holder take the heat for the decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court--has slipped to 27%. Three-quarters of those polled don't see him as a decisive leader. 
• Most damning for the President is that a Washington Post/ABC News poll from Oct. 15-18 showed that for the first time a majority of Americans don't believe he can make the right decisions to lead the country.

So while Pres. Obama's acolytes in the media refuse to report such an aggregation of polling, the fact is that the President has lost the support of independents, the largest voting "bloc" in the country and the group most important in his historic election. So said pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed piece.

The President continues to blame President Bush for the country's woes, especially the economy, but even that act is wearing thin with Americans. An October 26 Rasmussen poll showed that two-thirds of Americans aren't drinking the "Our-stimulus-saved-or-created-a-million-jobs" Kool-Aid. 

The percentage of people who think that Pres. Obama "inherited" the current economic crisis from Pres. Bush has dropped steadily over the year, according to Rasmussen. Over the last nine months that number has dropped from 84% to 63%. Today the number of people who blame Pres. Bush for the money mess we're in is about the same as those who now blame the current president. The more the President repeats his "It's Bush's Fault" mantra, the less that people believe it. 

Here's the kicker for the President, the one polling question that shows that his support is a mile wide and an inch deep, as they say in Texas: By a margin of 62% to 27%, majority respondents in an Oct. 26 Rasmussen poll said they trust themselves over the President to make the economic decisions necessary to get back on the road to economic recovery.

To a socialist-leaning Barack Obama, who believes that central planning will solve everything because the government is the answer to all questions, this is a death knell. For ten months this blog has attempted to show that his administration, because of its insular, elite, salon mentality, does not understand the American people and the American character. It sees itself as the savior of a nation that can save itself, thank you very much. Apparently two-thirds of the respondents see things our way.

Barack Obama will never understand that it was rugged individualism and a frontier spirit that settled this country, created great institutions of government, education and commerce to sustain it, and developed a font of goodness that other countries are quick to criticize and quicker still to drink from.  

When it comes to figuring out how to solve this nation's problems, the polls say Barack Obama's on the wrong side of history. We, the people, are on the other side. The right side.

Just thought you might like to know.

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.