Obama Presidental Approval Rating Below Carter
USA Today/Gallup has an interesting interactive website for tracking presidential approval ratings back to Truman, and you can do comparisons of two or more presidents. The chart above compares approval ratings for Obama and Jimmy Carter, showing that Obama is below Carter during his first six months in office. Does this mean anything? Maybe not, read the whole article below the interactive graph.
HT: Drudge Report
18 Comments:
I'm no fan of Carter, but in fairness, the man didn't jack up the deficit, nationalize a car company and try to force everyone into a government-run meat grinder health program from which he exempted himself and the rest of the ruling elite - all in his first six months. Plus, I don't remember Jimmy ever having almost hourly press conferences every single day.
Bam was not my first choice of all the bad choices we've had over the last few elections, but I wasn't all broken up about his win either. Now, I realize he is plain dangerous and he has exceeded my worst case scenario for his presidency - already. Anyone who can make me long for the good old days of Bush (both Bushes were disasters in my book), is someone I will actively try to remove from office. As one of "the people" because this guy sees the people as his serfs to do with as he pleases. No thanks.
When Barry Obama makes public oratory they are a combination of lecture, apology and entertainment. People mistake applause and laughter for him with leadership. This mistaken perception seems to waning and his standing is weakening.
Hopefully Americans will have the sense to vote in a Congress that will stand up to Obama and his dangerous ideas in 2010.
Great! Mark Perry as Palin's running mate in 2012 :)
Nice to see a dem dodging brickbats for a change. Judging by the chart perhaps, we should call this job: piñata-in-chief
Why Obamacare is sinking
"Why Obamacare is sinking?" Krauthammer asks...
Interesting commentary there QT...
That second sentence seems to nail it: "Once you commit your fantasies to words and numbers, the Congressional Budget Office comes along and declares that the emperor has no clothes"...:-)
Note the following from Rasmussen Reports: 53% Now Oppose Congressional Health Care Reform
'There is a huge partisan divide on the health care plan. Sixty-eight percent (68%) of Democrats favor it. However, the plan is opposed by 80% of Republicans and 60% of those not affiliated with either major party.
Most voters who earn less than $40,000 annually favor the legislation. Most who earn more than that amount are opposed'...
The reassurance that "Clinton won a second term despite low initial ratings" is sure to be cold comfort to all those Democrats in Congress, both moderates who want to retain their seats and chairmen who want to retain their gavels.
1,
Looks like the National Retail Federation also thinks Obamacare sucks.
"Looks like the National Retail Federation also thinks Obamacare sucks"...
Great link QT!
"the health care debate is the idea of an employer mandate provision, which would be catastrophic for our industry. Mandates would drive up costs for retailers while doing nothing to address waste, inefficiencies and lack of competition"...
Bingo!
Thanks for that QT...
Obama
1. Accurately identifies the problem.
2. States the problem with crystal clarity.
3. Believes in a solution that does much more harm than good.
Many assume since Obama is great at 1 & 2, he must be great at 3.
i.e. 3: great at solving problems for the good of society.
Believes in a solution that does much more harm than good.
Do Obama's "beliefs" trump the details? Does it really work for you that he is a smooth-talking, well-meaning person?
Is Massachusett's health care really a model that should be rolled out to the country?
QT, it doesn't matter much what I think. It's up to the American people. Obama's economic ideas, if adopted, would likely bankrupt the country.
His $787 billion stimulus is a failure. A tax cut would've had an immediate and powerful stimulative effect, similar to tax cuts under Kennedy in '61, Reagan in '81, and Bush in '01 & '08. Instead, U.S. real GDP may contract 3% in 2009.
It's ironic that export-dependent countries, e.g. communist China and socialist Germany, turned the U.S. towards bigger government through severe global imbalances, which benefited the U.S. tremendously.
Peak,
Thought for a minute you were suggesting that Obama had a record for solving problems.
Interesting theory. Do you have any evidence to support the idea that Germany & China are the reason that the U.S. is lurching again toward government control of the economy?
Isn't it more likely the influence of the legacy of FDR and 70 years of keynesian economics?
QT, I've explained it before, although the fact that Americans have been led to believe the 2000s were a U.S. economic failure is evidence enough. The U.S. has already moved towards big government.
The U.S. government is creating more assets and goods (through massive government spending) rather than clearing the market of existing excess assets and goods (through a large tax cut).
If both the production and consumption sides of the U.S. economy are included (rather than part of the production side), the U.S. economy outperformed all its major trading partners by a large margin in the 2000s.
Global Imbalances
It was inevitable global imbalances would correct. The question was would they correct slowly or suddenly. The U.S. had a virtuous cycle of consumption and investment. Export-led economies sold their goods too cheaply and lent their dollars too cheaply. Consequently, the U.S. overconsumed and underproduced, while export-led economies overproduced and underconsumed. The U.S. housing boom (and related goods) helped raise U.S. actual output towards potential output, which caused export-dependent economies to overproduce even more. The U.S. consumption-investment cycle turned into a boom, which was unsustainable.
Global imbalances began to correct slowly in 2007, until Lehman was allowed to fail, in September 2008, which froze the credit market, and caused the correction to accelerate. Nonetheless, the correction was inevitable. There was diminishing U.S. marginal utility, since Americans bought too many goods, and would buy more goods only if prices fell further. Export-led economies had production strains, while lending their dollars to the U.S. more cheaply. They exchanged their goods for U.S. dollars instead of U.S. goods, and received increasingly smaller gains-of-trade through inflation (e.g. postponing or never buying U.S. goods), received negative real interest rates (e.g. low bond yields), and lost in the foreign exchange market (receiving fewer units of their currencies per dollar). Export-led economies lost up to 10% a year either holding worth less U.S. paper assets, or through importing U.S. inputs (e.g. capital goods rather than consumer goods) for their output.
QT, in summary, U.S. households and firms had to turn to the U.S. government for money, because dollars were shifted from the U.S. private sector to the U.S. government by export-led economies.
"1. Accurately identifies the problem.
2. States the problem with crystal clarity."...
I'm assuming you're NOT talking about the clown defiling the Oval Office, right?
"You know," Obama told a group of hand-selected, sympathetic bloggers, "I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about."
Peak,
The latest global economic meltdown seems to have had more to do with the proliferation of securitization and excessive leverage creating a systemic risk to the global financial system. Trade imbalances do not seem to adequately explain the origins of the present crisis.
The reason that the global economy was awash in capital which even baffled Greenspan and economists was leverage.
Why toxic assets are so hard to clean up
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