HOUNDS & HUNTING

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

HOUNDS & HUNTING

I have a respected friend who also writes a column. He is of the liberal persuasion and I often find myself at odds with him on things political.

Recently his “take” on the dissatisfaction with President Obama is that the President’s problems can be laid at the feet of the reluctant Republican controlled House of Representatives. In this he fails to acknowledge that Republican control of the House is a recent event and that the President had complete control of Congress for half of his presidency, during which he had similar bad luck selling whatever “it” is he is selling.

So that hound doesn’t hunt.

He joins an ever-smaller group of people who still want to say Obama fails because Bush failed. If we follow that reasoning each successive presidency should be judged on the failings of the previous president rather than on how well the new president improved things.

That hound won’t hunt at all.

More recently Obama’s problems have been assigned to the Tea Party. As I said in a recent column, there are over 500 Senators and Representatives. If you count those who call themselves “Tea Party” you are still left with well over 400 other Republicans and Democrats. Did they just get “excused” from those votes?

That hound won’t hunt. Heck, it won’t even fetch.

Now it is written that people dissing the president is not a new thing. Examples are given as far back as the presidency of George Washington. Certainly, criticism comes with the job. That is true even in small towns and counties.

However, this hound does not hunt either and, in fact, chooses to sleep in the sun.

The proper comparison is with the level of criticism. How many former presidents were faced with the horrible poll numbers President Obama deals with. You can count on one hand the number of White House occupants who have been held in such low esteem and, frankly, at this moment in time he enjoys being with those at the bottom of that list. For recent examples check Richard Nixon, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter against the Obama numbers.

There are a lot of days between now and the next presidential election. Many things will happen that could change the President’s poll numbers. And as I have said in many of my columns, in the end we will have to choose between him and one other person who we may find even more worrisome.

But let’s be realistic.

Barack Obama is receiving some of the worst poll ratings in history. At this point-in-time he has the Black Caucus upset, the Jewish community upset, the business community roiling, even James Carvel is upset(who would have thought that ever could happen), as is a seriously significant portion of previous happy supporters who are revisiting the wisdom of their decision to back him in the first place.

It is against this situation that he must now establish a plan to regain the popularity he enjoyed in the last election and to win again the confidence of a nation. It is not an impossible task for a man who is clearly book smart, has a wonderful smile, and managed to get a huge percentage of American voters to overlook his inexperience in the last election and entrust to him the leadership of the free world.

Bottom line, the reelection of the incumbent president is in play.

And it is no one’s fault but his.

And there we have a hound that will hunt!