President Obama’s signature initiative is on the ropes — Down in the count! Fourth and long! — but he remains strangely sportsmanlike.
“We fumbled the rollout on this health-care law,” he admitted at Thursday afternoon’s news conference. “I am very frustrated, but I’m also somebody who, if I fumbled the ball, you know, I’m going to wait until I get the next play, and then I’m going to try to run as hard as I can and do right by the team.”
Four times he mentioned fumbling — both the HealthCare.gov Web site and his promise that people could keep their health plans if they liked them. “These are two fumbles on something that — on a big game, which — but the game’s not over,” he said.
In a narrow sense, that’s probably true: There may well be enough time to salvage Obamacare.
But on the broader question of whether Obama can rebuild an effective presidency after this debacle, it’s starting to look as if it may be game over.
The record for recent second-term presidents is not good: Reagan had Iran-contra, Clinton had impeachment and Bush had Katrina and Iraq. Once a president suffers a blow such as Obama is now suffering with his health-care law — in which the public not only disapproves of a president’s actions but starts to take a negative view of him personally — it is difficult to recover.
This week’s Quinnipiac University poll found Obama’s job-approval rating at its lowest ever, 39 percent. More ominous: Only 44 percent say Obama is honest and trustworthy, while 52 percent say he is not; that’s the first time more thought him untrustworthy than trustworthy. Polls show Obama’s personal favorability rating has dropped in tandem.
Via: Washington Post
Continue Reading.....
No comments:
Post a Comment