NILE GARDINER: IS OBAMA NOW THE MOST UNPOPULAR PRESIDENT SINCE JIMMY CARTER

Posted By on August 15th, 2011

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100100942/a-disastrous-summer-for-the-white-house-is-barack-obama-now-the-most-unpopular-us-president-since-jimmy-carter
A disastrous summer for the White House. Is Barack Obama now the most unpopular US president since Jimmy Carter?
Nile Gardiner, Telegraph.co.uk
Gallup’s latest numbers are a real eye-opener. The polling company now has Barack Obama’s approval rating at just 39 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, and down 13 percentage points since the start of June. Gallup finds that 54 percent of Americans now disapprove of the president’s job performance. And according to the RealClear Politics average of several major polls, a staggering 73.8 percent of Americans now believe the country is moving down the wrong track. .Obama’s low personal ratings are coupled with widespread disillusionment with the condition of the US economy in Gallup’s surveys. 53 percent of Americans now rate the economy as poor (as opposed to just eight percent who believe it is good/excellent) and 79 percent say the economic outlook is getting worse.

Strikingly, Barack Obama has achieved the lowest ratings for any US president at this stage of his first term in office for 32 years, since 1979, according to polling data provided by the Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center. To place Obama’s ratings in historical context, at the same stage of their first term (or only term in the case of Bush Snr.), George W. Bush had a 60 percent approval rating (August 2003), Bill Clinton had 46 percent approval (August 1995), George H.W. Bush 71 percent (August 1991), and Ronald Reagan 43 percent (August 1983).

It should be noted that Reagan’s approval rating dipped as low as 35 percent in January 1983 (before rising back to 54 percent by the end of the year), and Clinton’s to 37 percent in June 1993. But you have to go back to Jimmy Carter in August 1979 (at 33 percent), to find a US president less popular than Obama at this stage of his presidency. And the historic job approval average for all US presidents since Harry S. Truman for the 11th quarter of their first term is 52.2 percent, more than 13 points ahead of Obama’s current level.

Could President Obama’s approval rating fall as low as Jimmy Carter’s, hovering just above 30 percent? Undoubtedly it could, with the economic situation deteriorating and consumer confidence plunging. This is a distinctly Carter-esque presidency, with a weak president unable to lead, hugely challenging economic conditions, and declining American power on the world stage. Gallup’s figures have shown an astonishing drop in support for Barack Obama in the past eight weeks, which could well be accelerated over the course of the next few months, not least with media attention heavily focused on the Republican presidential race as well as the dire state of the economy.

This is shaping up to be a disastrous summer for Mr. Obama, with a huge drop in public confidence in his ‘hope and change’ presidency. Gallup’s latest poll is probably the shape of things to come, and the president has by no means reached rock bottom. There is a long way further for him to fall, and if the precedent set by Jimmy Carter is anything to go by, Obama could be scraping the 30 percent approval mark before long.

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