Sunday, February 21, 2010

Obama gets failing grades on hopey-changey thingies

HT: Papa Mike's Blog

Though The One gives himself "a good, solid B+" as President, visitors to the CBS News website beg to differ. Here, for your visual inspection, were the results as of 9:41 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, February 21, 2010:

The Economy: Yeah, it appears that whole Stimulus Thingie isn't going over all that well, with just over 70% of respondents giving the POTUS a failing grade.

I like how Scrapple Face covered "Cash for Clunkers" -- Clunker program spent, dealers to get government cheese.

Jobs are evaporating like the morning dew, welfare workers fear for their lives -- It appears that Obama is making progress on doing for the rest of the country as President what he did for Chicago as a Community Organizer.

Foreign Policy: Not quite as striking a failure -- Only about 62% of respondents gave The One a big fat F.

Bowing to some heads of state (and evidently to the Mayor of Tampa as well. Should we cut him some slack for evidently mistaking her for a Japanese dignitary?), giving tacky gifts to others, and ushering the Dali Lama out of the White House past trash bags piled up at the servants' entrance: none of these things seem to be impressing the American people. Obama acts like the redneck butt of a Jeff Foxworthy joke.

And this is just a look at the superficialities of his interactions with other nations.

Health Care: Sure the Anointed One gets an A for Effort on this one? Um, no. In fact, respondents think he is doing worse on health care than on the economy. Nearly 82% gave Obama an F.

Of course, this is probably the mixed bag of dissatisfaction -- Opponents of socialized medicine are just as ticked off at his attempts to push it through as proponents are at his failure to do so. This is one where he just can't win for losing.

If he had all the political savvy he thought he had, he'd never have launched this ship to begin with. He'd have started in less controversial waters, then gradually moved toward a total takeover, rather than simply launching into it with backroom deals and all the other shenanigans he'd promised to forgo.

Afghanistan and Iraq: Here we have nearly 17% agreeing with him that he's doing a B or better job on Afghanistan, and a little over 13% grading him a B or higher on Iraq. That still leaves us with 83% and 87%, respectively, thinking he's overestimated himself.

Roughly a third of the American people gave him failing grades.

And that's the best he scored on any area.

Threat of Terrorism: A little over 65% give Fearless Leader a failing grade.

With treating terrorists like ordinary, garden-variety criminals, Obama's administration is not giving people the sense that he takes terrorism seriously. Unless, of course, it's the "terrorism" of being a veteran, a prolifer, or a law-abiding owner of firearms.

The only thing that kept an airliner from being blown out of the sky on Christmas day was a Dutch filmmaker who had more wits about him singly than the entire intelligence community in aggregate. But, Obama's head of Homeland Security declared "The system worked." Yeah, it worked about as well as the Pantybomber's defective detonator. When real life plays out like a Buster Keaton movie, it's time to reassess how good a job your people are doing and how seriously they're taking it.

Energy and the Environment: Just under 60% think the President is failing. That's practically a ringing endorsement, considering the scores he's getting in other areas.

Still, people evidently don't think much of Obama's plan to tax the bejeebers out of domestic energy producers, or his twisted and expensive Cap and Trade plan.

Americans are working on expanding domestic production, and would no doubt appreciate it if the POTUS stayed out of the way.

Social Issues: Again, just under 60% giving Fearless Leader a failing grade.

Of course he's not going to be popular with the majority of Americans who oppose abortion. But he's not making any friends among moderate prochoicers, either, who are uncomfortable with his attempts to sneak tax-funded abortion into his health care plan.

It's not just the Right he's displeasing. Gay rights activists feel as if Obama hasn't followed through on promised support of their goals. Ditto for gun control advocates.

It seems Obama promised to be all things to all people, and has discovered that people are pissed off when he doesn't deliver.

Bipartisanship: Nearly 83% of respondents gave The Great Uniter a failing grade.

This is hardly a surprise. He did everything in his power to stifle disagreement during the election. Why would he behave any differently once he got into the White House?

Despite Obama's claims to the contrary, Republicans have put forth their own initiatives for health care reform. And people are getting wise to the way Obama claims that his opponents offer no solutions. They're realizing that what he means is "They don't simply cave in and do what I tell them to."
Overall?

I had thought that Obama's supporters were so blindly enamored of him that they'd blame themselves for his failures rather than admit to having bought a pig in a poke. This is one where I'm being proven wrong.

The people have spoken, and they say: "You suck."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Christina,

The methodological problems with these on-line surveys are so deep, I'm not sure where to start. There are various types of biases built into the structure of this survey - for example, I just took the survey, refreshed the page, and took it again! I'm sure plenty of your teabagger friends have spent many Miller Lite-fueled afternoons repreatedly doing this.

So before you start making claims like this:
The people have spoken, and they say: "You suck."

You might want to brush up on survey research.

Chad

OperationCounterstrike said...

Yep. These "call in and vote" things are meaningless and everyone knows it.

Christina Dunigan said...

There's a difference between "This poll is not scientific" and "This poll is meaningless."

It does show that visitors to the CBS news site are not at all impressed with The One.

I'm sure visitors to, say, Rolling Stone or Utne Reader might be more approving, and visitors to National Review and First Freedom would be even more disapproving.

Anonymous said...

Christina

If the aggregate results of a survey or poll can be significantly altered by a single respondent (or small sub-group of respondents), then the results are completely meaningless.

Chad