WHY BAM’S DOOMED: JOHN PODHORETZ
Unless something extraordinarily dramatic comes along to change the course of the US economy and the sentiments of the American people in the next six months, Barack Obama is finished.
That conclusion is inescapable from the history of US presidential politics since 1945.
Obama is now below 40 percent in job approval in the Gallup poll. Yes, as the political scientist Larry Sabato points out, almost every president since FDR has fallen to that level. But of those seven presidents, five (Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush) went on either to lose the next election or to not run again.
The Truman story is complex: He was at 35 percent in 1946 yet won in ’48 — but he fell back into the 30s in 1951 and opted against running for a second full term.
The exceptions are Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. But the essentials of those wins should terrify Obama’s supporters.
Reagan hit 35 percent in 1983. By year’s end, though, the economy had lifted out of a dreadful recession to growth at an annual rate of 4.5 percent. In ’84, it grew at a sizzling 7.2 percent. The unemployment rate fell from 10.2 percent in 1983 to 7.2 percent on Election Day 1984 — and Reagan won 49 states.
Clinton hit 39 percent in September 1994, and was slammed with a GOP triumph in the midterm elections two months later. But by the end of ’94, the economy had grown 4.1 percent. Growth dropped to 2.5 percent in ’95, but bounced back to a healthy 3.7 percent in ’96. Plus, unemployment on Clinton’s watch fell from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 5.4 percent in ’96.
So how do things look for Obama? Bad — in every particular.
Growth in the first quarter of 2011 was a shocking 0.4 percent. Second quarter: 1.3 percent. Forecasters are dropping their estimates of growth for the year to 2 percent — and that seems extraordinarily optimistic.
Joachim Fels, of Morgan Stanley, said Wednesday that America was “dangerously close” to a recession, around the same time that the president was telling CBS’ Anthony Mason, “I don’t think we’re in danger of another recession.”
Oh? Yesterday’s horrible report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia indicates that manufacturing in our region “contracted sharply in August.” As The Wall Street Journal’s Kathleen Madigan reported, “Its factory-sector index . . . fell to -30.7 this month from 3.2 in July.” That index “has never been this low without the economy being in recession.”
The consequences of a double-dip recession are nightmarish for the nation and fatal to Obama’s hopes. Aside from everything else, unemployment would certainly rise from its current 9.1 percent just as the election year starts.
As we’ve seen over the last few years, even if the economy comes back, there’s no reason to believe the jobs picture will improve much. So Obama will be seeking re-election with the jobless rate far worse than the one he inherited — and worse than it was in the previous year.
He’ll argue that he inherited a crisis. Fine, most voters won’t blame him for the fact that the unemployment rate rose to 10 percent after the 2008 meltdown. But if it returns to that level after dropping to 8.9 percent, he’ll have no convincing defense.
To sum up: History says that five of seven presidents whose poll numbers hit the 30s either lost or dropped out. The two who won were able to run on economic numbers that left the public optimistic about the future.
Not now. Gallup says just 11 percent of Americans are satisfied with the country’s economic condition. And they hold Obama responsible: Just 26 percent approve of the job he’s doing on the economy.
And just 23 percent of independents approve. But Obama needs a majority of independent voters to prevail next November; it’s extraordinarily difficult to see how he gets them.
The president is giving a speech after his vacation that will lay out a dramatic jobs and deficit-reduction plan. That’s nice.
But given the ineffectuality of his efforts thus far, his supporters shouldn’t hold out too much hope that he’s going to change the course of the world’s largest economy, which is heading toward the shoals again — and is far likelier than not to run Obama aground for good.
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