Lower and Lower

A Downward Spiral

As if things couldn't get worse for the one of the most popularly elected presidents in recent memory. His Chief-of-Staff is leaving, he's losing his party's majority in the House, and possibly in the senate. Unemployment filings have risen once again and the unemployment rate continues to stubbornly hover near ten percent. Except that now, a recent POLITICO George Washington University Battleground poll indicates that forty-four percent of the nation currently will vote to replace Obama while thirteen percent are considering voting for someone else. Only thirty-eight percent of those questioned said that he deserves to be reelected. With his own approval ratings tumbling and his own party distancing themselves from him, what is a president to do.


Yet Another Parallel

I know that continuously drawing parallels between Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush may seem annoying to some, and redundant to others, but I find it fascinating. We have a President, who more so than any other president modeled his campaign message as the exact opposite of the outgoing administration. The Bush Bashing was so intense that Senator John McCain, Obama's actual running mate, once had to stop during a debate and say that he is not George Bush and that if he had wanted to run against him he missed his chance by about four years.

But here we are today with a president who's numbers started off very high have sense taken a tremendous nose dive (remember Bush holds the record for having both the highest ans lowest approval ratings of any president). The only difference is that it is about four years to early for Obama. Bush lost his House majority in 2006, and Obama will lose his in 2010. This is a huge parallel because it means that Obama will undoubtedly have to make a huge shift in his governing policies because Republican's will hold the power of the purse. And in fact the White House has acknowledged this fact, and has begun to repaint Obama as the new version, he is now Obama 2.0. On the other hand, President Bush didn't really seem to shift too much and his message remained pretty much the same. It will be interesting to see if any further parallels between these two apparently opposites will emerge in the future.

Later,
Cody

(Photo: Courtesy of Reuters)