To hear some commentators tell it, President Obama has been plagued by a truly terrible case of bad luck. The mounting scandals – the IRS, the DOJ information grab, Benghazi, and now the NSA – have formed the perfect storm. Even granting that there is some truth to the perfect-storm argument, these critics are letting the president off the hook far too easily. Obama and his administration have brought this upon themselves through a series of conscious, ill-advised decisions.
As I argued on my show, Political Insiders, with Pat Caddell and John Leboutillier, Obama is seeing his approval go into free fall. Numbers don’t lie: his favorability rating, which had been hovering around or above the 50% mark since his re-election, is now down to 45% approval and 54% disapproval, according to the newest CNN/ORC poll. And while Obama had managed to keep himself in the public’s good graces through the first month of these scandal revelations, his ratings are clearly taking a hit.
The number of Americans who think Obama is honest has dropped nine points over the past month to 49%. Back in 2009, 73% of the public felt he was honest and trustworthy.
Beyond the decline in his polling numbers, Obama looks weak on foreign policy. After months of indecision as to whether the US should intervene in Syria, the President finally authorized sending weapons to the Syrian rebels—but only after his approach was publicly criticized by former President Bill Clinton. It is clear that Clinton and neocons like John McCain (still criticizing Obama on the floor of the Senate) goosed him into this new position. Obama seems far from in control of his own agenda.
Meanwhile, new numbers from Rasmussen show that the American public is paying close attention to the NSA scandal. An overwhelming 82% of those surveyed have been following news stories about the federal government’s surveillance efforts either very closely or somewhat closely. That figure doesn’t bode well for the President as more revelations are sure to come out—and he’s already out of step with the public on the issue.
According to a new Fox poll, only 32% say that the NSA’s collection of millions of phone records was an “acceptable government action to prevent terrorism,” while 62% said it was an “unacceptable and alarming invasion of privacy rights.” What’s more, six in ten disapprove of how Obama is handling government surveillance – higher than the 52% who disapproved of Bush on the same subject in 2006.
Finally, as I have argued since the story broke, the IRS scandal is the most serious scandal plaguing the Obama administration. The story took an even more dire turn for the President over the past week. The Fox poll shows that 68% of the public believes the IRS scandal came straight from the White House. By 76% to 16% voters now want the IRS removed as the healthcare enforcement agency – a major blow to Obama’s hallmark legislation.
Let me be clear, the IRS scandal is already bigger than Watergate. While Nixon was the mastermind behind Watergate we are witnessing the corruption of the Executive branch of the US government. We will certainly learn more about what role Stephanie Cutter played in all of this and what was going on in the DC office vs. Cincinnati where the IRS was first pointing fingers, but even as it stands we are facing one of the biggest scandals of the post-war era.
A mere 23% of the American public feels confident and proud of our nation’s political leaders as compared to 71% who are wondering – as I do on a daily basis – whether this is really the best we can do.
It follows that I am left to wonder where the GOP is in all of this. They have not been nearly as vocal over these scandals as they were on the debt ceiling, for instance. A divided GOP over the NSA and inaction on seizing IRS weakness to truly cripple ObamaCare is decisions that leave me perplexed to say the least.
We are witnessing the undoing of President Obama. The “most transparent” president in history has revealed himself to be in line with his predecessors and seriously let down the American people in the process.
These scandals have left ample opportunity for the GOP to get ahead as we head towards the midterms. The question remains whether or not they will seize the moment. It’s theirs for the taking.
