Seven Perceptions That Could Sink Obama

Success or failure in politics is often a matter of public perception… reality doesn’t always dictate whether a particular politician will or will not receive support from the public. To that extent, framing the debate is important.

I ran across a list of seven perceptions that some of the public holds and, if the views become prevalent, could well sink PresBo’s popularity and ability to pursue his liberal agenda.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1109/29993.html

PresBo thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money
Essentially, this is the perception that he’s spending far too much money on even the flimsiest of pretexts. At its heart, this is an accurate point of view in many ways… whether or not he actually views it as “Monopoly money” is irrelevant, as it’s clear that he views the amount of money he’s spending as unimportant. Sure, he said he’d “cut the deficit in half” at some point, but look closely at that. He inherited a $400 billion deficit and ballooned it to $1.8 trillion. Even if he cuts that in half, reducing the deficit to the $900 billion range, that’s still more than twice the deficit he inherited. I agree that this attitude, if adopted by a majority of the public, would severely hurt PresBo’s political power.


Too much Leonard Nimoy
This refers to his tendency to propose some arcane theory to solve any problem we have, all the while ignoring dissenters and walking all over everybody in order to achieve his “logical” goal. I don’t view this one as incredibly damaging except in a worst-case scenario.

That’s the Chicago way
This is another incredibly accurate viewpoint, that PresBo and his advisors are mired in Chicago-style “tough guy” politics… that they’re willing to run roughshod over ANYBODY who disagrees with them. They have public fights with Rush Limbaugh, PBS, and even Fox News… all to harass and hurt those who dissent. Some of his advisors have acknowledged this… and are proud of it! If this view prevails it would strip from him his claim to being a “non-partisan style” of President.

He’s a pushover
Think about this one. He talks big, but that’s about it. He warns Iran not to produce nuclear fuel and, when they ignore him, he WARNS THEM AGAIN. He told Dems last summer not to go home for recess without passing a health care bill, but when they did it anyway, nothing happened. They tried to paint Fox News as “not a real news organization,” but Fox still gets access to the President and his staff. This one could be bad for him. Americans don’t LIKE wimps in office… and his bowing to foreign heads of state doesn’t help his image any.

He disparages America
This is another one that could easily be very bad for him. He travels the world apologizing for America, instead of being proud of his country and its accomplishments in the world. His actions do not seem planned to maintain our international prestige, but rather to reduce us to a “just-another-country” status in world politics. In many ways, this ties in with the previous attitude about him being a pushover… they are related. And again, Americans don’t WANT a President who hates his own country and is ashamed of it.

President Pelosi
Personally, I don’t think this one is very likely. IF we started seeing him as having abdicated his role of leadership in Congress and let Pelosi have all that power, then MAYBE it would hurt him. But I don’t think that’s likely to happen… people are too proud of our “historic” President. How could they remain proud of a powerless figurehead? So I don’t think this attitude has legs.

He’s in love with the man in the mirror
Being seen as overly vain would be a detriment, but not a serious one, I think. Sure, he loves to hear himself talk, and there’s always another “historic” and “unprecedented” accomplishment that his press office will announce about him… but it takes ego to be a politician and the most that will happen is people will stop listening to him. I think that’s already happening to some extent… look at the bid for the Olympics and his less than productive visit to China.

To me it seems as if his irresponsible fiscal policies will hurt him the most, followed closely by his apparent compulsion to apologize and bow to anybody who isn’t American. Those are the worst and most likely of the seven listed above.

I could easily add a couple the author of the above piece missed. How about the fact that he ignores what anybody wants except himself? He certainly isn’t concerned about what the VOTERS want… or else he’d drop his ObamaCare bill. Or that he repeatedly says one thing and does another. He wants “bipartisan” politics, but to him that means his opponents support his bills; he will run a transparent administration by rushing bills through as quickly as possible, without letting even Congressmen read them; he won’t hire any registered lobbyists… except for the numerous waivers of that policy which were almost immediately issued. And so forth.

The point is that many of PresBo’s actions are not liked and are even actively resented by many people. As that number grows larger, PresBo will experience more and more problems while in office. He can’t just say the right words, he has to GOVERN in a responsible fashion. Just talking about fiscal responsibility and reducing the national debt isn’t good enough, not while he’s pushing more than one proposal that would INCREASE the national debt substantially.

These are some attitudes to watch for. The more prevalent these views get, the less effective President Spendaholic will be.