If President Obama were a baseball player he would have gone 0 for 2013.
No, it’s not exactly breaking news that 2013 was a bad year for the president. But he may soon look back on the remnants of a bad year and say, “Those were the good old days.”
The rollout, he told us, would be as smooth and easy as shopping on Amazon. If Amazon sued the president for slander, I think Amazon would win.
Then there were all those (let’s be nice and call them) misstatements of fact.
If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan.
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
Premium costs will go down on average $2500.
Okay, let’s just stipulate that so far ObamaCare has been one great big mess. Period! And it’s exacted a toll on the president.
As CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger put it: “People don’t think he’s as competent as they used to think. They don’t think he’s as trustworthy as they used to think.”
But it’s not just the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare. There were also revelations in 2013 that the National Security Agency was secretly keeping tabs on all of us. Mr. Obama defended the plan, which caused a split in his liberal base. Turns out they don’t like secret, widespread surveillance anymore than a lot of (but not all my any means) conservatives do.
Liberals were angry, too, that the president continued to use drones to knock off terrorists – and sometimes, innocent bystanders – a program started by the one liberals detest, George W. Bush.
There was also the IRS scandal, which conservatives believe showed that the president’s team was willing to use the agency to punish conservatives and further it’s own liberal agenda –no matter what the law said.
Whether it was Republican obstruction as Mr. Obama believes, or principled GOP opposition, the president got nowhere on a jobs program; nowhere on tax reform; nowhere on immigration reform; no hike in the minimum wage; and no expansion of background checks for gun purchases, even after the Newtown massacre, despite a strong effort by the president.
And a new CNN/ORC International poll shows a drop of 14 percentage points since the beginning of 2013 in President Obama’s approval rating. It’s now down to 41 percent.
Another poll, this one by ABC News and the Washington Post shows that 45 percent of Americans trust Republicans to do a better job handling the economy compared to 41 percent for President Obama.
But anyone who thinks that what goes down must at some point go back up, that 2014 has got to be better than 2013, may be engaging in wishful thinking.
Read More By: Bernie Goldberg
