Who is the Worst President Since WWII ?

Posted by

CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser

(CNN) - President Barack Obama tops the list of the worst presidents since World War Two, according to a new national poll.

And the survey, released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University, also indicates that a plurality of voters nationwide say in hindsight that the country would be better off if Mitt Romney had won the 2012 presidential election.

Obama at 41% approval in new CNN Poll of Polls; Congress at 14%
Thirty-three percent of people questioned in the poll say that Obama is the worst president since the Second World War, with 28% saying George W. Bush was the worst. Thirteen percent picked Richard Nixon, with 8% naming Jimmy Carter.
"Over the span of 69 years of American history and 12 presidencies, President Barack Obama finds himself with President George W. Bush at the bottom of the popularity barrel," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
It's important to note that Obama and Bush, his predecessor in the White House, are more in the public conscious than previous presidents, and that both have governed during a time of bitter partisanship that's made compromise between the two major political parties extremely difficult. When Quinnipiac last asked the question, in 2006, Bush topped the list, with 34% saying he was the nation's worst president.
According to the poll, Ronald Reagan (at 35%) tops the list of the best president since WWII, with 18% saying Bill Clinton was best, followed by John F. Kennedy at 15% and Obama at 8%.
Voters are divided on whether Obama's been a better president than his predecessor, with 39% saying he's better than Bush and 40% saying he's worse. No surprise, there's a wide partisan divide on this question.
Bush left office in January 2009 with very low poll numbers. But according to a recent CNN/ORC International survey, his favorable rating now stands at 46%, up 11 percentage points over the past five and a half years. His favorable rating, according to the CNN poll, is now on par with Obama.
Better off if Romney had won?
Forty-five percent of those questioned say that America would be better off if Romney had won the 2012 election, with 38% saying the country would be worse off. Again, it's no surprise that 84% of Republicans say that America would be better if Romney had won and nearly three quarters of Democrats saying things would be worse.
For Romney, this endorsement's close to home
An adviser close to the former Massachusetts governor told CNN that he received a bunch of calls Wednesday, following the release of the poll, from donors who contributed to the 2012 Romney presidential campaign.
Spencer Zwick, the campaign finance chairman for Romney's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, said that he thinks the poll "creates a hope and interest from a lot of those donors who would have loved to seen Romney become president but are hopeful there may be a shot in the future."
"It started a few months ago with donors saying 'do you think there's any shot,' to donors now saying 'how do we convince him to do it.' Which is kind of interesting because they have heard Gov. Romney say 'I'm not planning on doing this again' and I think some of these donors don't want to take no for an answer," added Zwick.
Romney has said over and over that he won't run for the White House a third time.
"I'm not running," Romney last month on NBC's "Meet the Press," a line Romney's used in interviews every time he's asked about 2016. Romney's wife, Ann, has also been adamant against another run.
How many ways can Romney say no to 2016
Obama's job running the government
By a 54%-44% margin, the survey indicates that the Obama administration is not competent in running the government.
The poll's Wednesday release comes as the scandal rocking the Department of Veterans Affairs dominated headlines recently. It's the latest controversy of the past year, following the NSA snooping scandal, the controversy over the IRS targeting of some conservative non-profit groups, and the rough rollout of the new federal health care law.
The President has also faced numerous international challenges, including the new bloodshed in Iraq, the civil war in Syria, and the fighting in Ukraine, as well as the controversial swapping of five Taliban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay for the release of a U.S. soldier held captive in Afghanistan.
"This poll gives a window into the sentiment of Americans at the moment," said CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, who said he suspects the numbers could change dramatically in four or five years.
The Quinnipiac University poll was conducted June 24-30, with 1,446 registered voters nationwide questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 2.6 percentage points.

Book Study: Blood Feud - The Clintons Vs. The Obamas Part III

Part III: Bill Clinton and the Betrayed Deal

        Ed Klein's sources are people close to the Clintons and they portrayed for Blood Feud a former president who lives and breathes for the purpose of getting back into the White House. Since losing the 2008 Democratic primary to the Obamas, the Clintons have been furiously rebuilding their supremacy over their party. Hillary's mansion in New York and Bill's apartment above the presidential library in Little Rock have been the focus major fundraising, partying, and deal making - all for the purpose of wresting control of the Democratic party away from the Obama faction.

During Obama's first term, Bill's strategy was to overcome the mutual animosity with the Obamas by making Barack Obama beholden to the Clintons. It began in 2008 with Hillary rallying her partisans behind the Obama campaign following its triumph over her in the primaries. It continued with her accepting the cabinet job of secretary of state. It reached its peak when Bill Clinton agreed to help Barack Obama's re-election effort in 2012.

Bill Clinton was initially excited about Hillary's prospects as the in-coming secretary of state. He imagined she would be a shaper of foreign policy and that she would get big things done in the Middle East, with Russia, and elsewhere. The world's stage would be her arena to look presidential and she would build her resume for 2016. Bill expected to be called-on by President Obama to advise him on policy, much like George W. Bush did from time to time.

Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the Obama team wanted nothing to do with Bill Clinton and allowed Hillary Clinton no freedom of action on foreign policy. She was expected to follow orders and (like the rest of the cabinet) was only invited to policy meetings to agree to policy decisions that had already been made by the president's shadow team (i.e. his Chicago advisers) in advance. 

Bill Clinton flew into rants every time Obama was mentioned by his friends at Little Rock gatherings. He complained "I have no relationship with the president. Even George W. Bush use to call me up for advice." 

Bill and Hillary were never invited to dine at the White House during Obama's first term. (The one and only time the Obamas asked them to come over for dinner was in 2013, and it was very unpleasant and awkward for both parties.)

Clinton always thought Obama was a catastrophe who was out of his depth as president of the United States. Clinton told friends that the president was an "amateur" who knows nothing about how to run the government. The best Clinton could hope-for was for the president to call on him for a big favor. He told Hillary, "I got to get this guy to owe me big."

Certainly - to forestall another left wing Democrat rebellion against the Clintons in 2016 - Bill thought it best to have Barack Obama in his corner. His first opportunity came in the fall of 2011. That summer, President Obama's poll numbers plummeted to the lowest of his presidency. (Slightly lower than they are now). His campaign team was in a panic over strategy. David Plouffe told him the only way to win in 2012 was to recruit the help of Bill Clinton. Valerie Jarrett was dead against it. She despised the Clintons and instead implored the president to reach out to Oprah Winfrey. Plouffe won out after Oprah - still sore from her own wounds dealt by the Obamas - refused to help.

Begrudgingly, Obama invited Bill Clinton to a game of golf at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. There, he said to the former president, "I want you to campaign for me in 2012." Bill told Hillary, "Now I've got him!"

Bill Clinton thought he had a deal that Barack Obama would back Hillary in 2016 if Bill got Barack re-elected in 2012. Klein has several chapters leading up to the dramatic moment when Clinton delivered the crowning endorsement speech at the DNC on the second night of the convention. Obama received an immediate boost in the polls immediately afterward. 

In building-up the tension of that moment, Klein claims the Romney team was gathering momentum in the polling across the summer of 2012. That's not the way this reader remembers it. The only time I recall Romney ever having a tie or a lead over President Obama was after the first debate - well after the conventions.

By all accounts, Clinton's endorsement helped Obama's re-election. In the mind of the forty-second president - of course - it made all the difference. After the election, Bill Clinton received the cold shoulder for his work. President Obama ignored his calls and gave Clinton no public thanks (just a private call thanking him on election night.) Then one night, Obama finally returned Clinton's call and told him he was keeping his "options open for 2016." Clinton was so infuriated he hung up the phone on the president of the United States.

As 2012 rolled into 2013, Bill Clinton went from wooing Barack Obama behind Hillary 2016 to threatening his second term agenda unless the president made good on the "deal". This was made clear when Bill sent his aide, Doug Band and a few others to the White House to convey the threat. After the administration had tried to hang Benghazi on Hillary, it was open season as far as Bill was concerned.

Consequently, 2013 saw the Obamas throwing a few half-hearted tokens the Clintons' way. The president was featured with Hillary on 60 Minutes in which he praised her service as secretary of state. He invited her to a private luncheon at the White House. Then, he finally had the Clintons over for dinner. In all these small gestures, the president offered them nothing in the way of support for 2016. Bill Clinton was convinced the president had no intention of backing Hillary or relinquishing his control over the DNC in the run-up to the next election.

Ed Klein tells us Bill Clinton is in the process of making good on his threat to wreck Obama's second term and pave the way to a Clinton victory in 2016. After the Affordable Care Act went into affect and millions of individually insured Americans lost their healthcare plan in contradiction to the president's promise to the contrary, Bill Clinton didn't let Obama off the hook. He came out to the press and said, "The president should honor the commitment he made to the American people." When the president waffled over the "red line" over chemical weapons in Syria, Bill Clinton said Obama risked "looking like a wuss."

The most tangible way Bill Clinton has harmed Obama's second term has been by hiring his advisers away from him, thereby denying the White House its most effective demographers and statistics analysts. Klein names these top advisers in the book, and how Bill Clinton is snatching Obama's team away from him. Exasperated, Obama called up Hillary after Jim Messina switched allegiances. He asked Hillary if she would "rein-in Bill", saying "I can't lose these people." She told the president, "I can't rein-in Bill. Never could." And that was that.

Bill told Hillary that they will need to run against the Obama administration to win in the next election. He said, "The voters are turning against him and we will need to. We have to make it clear that this is going to be a third Clinton term, not a third Obama term."

Next, we will have a look at the supremacy of Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett in the shaping of the Obama presidency.

Patriot Thought

 

 

Happy Birthday America!

     Naturally this Fourth of July, amid the stockpiles of hamburgers, hotdogs, and other edible products of prosperity about to make their way to the grill, I am reminded about how special I am to have been born in America. Of all the places in the world, God chose THIS location for me to be birthed in. God and America have been very good to me. I have had a loving and supportive family to make me feel important and a country to feel safe in and free to explore the opportunities it provides.

     For 33 years I have pursued the happiness Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders pledged their lives to. I have strove to judge my compatriots by the content of their character the way Martin Luther King dreamed. I have worked to become the husband my beautiful wife deserves and the friend my friends deserve.

    America has blessed me with a home I call mine, an education she told me I was entitled to, a college degree I didn't have to pay upfront for, a career of my choosing, a place I could speak my mind without fear of punishment, presumed innocence until proven guilty, a jury of my peers in case I need it (thankfully I haven't had to cash-in on it), and innumerable other benefits.

Happy Birthday, America. Today is your anniversary, but the birthday has been mine every day.

Jason  

Book Study: Blood Feud -The Clintons Vs. The Obamas (Ed Klein) Part II

Part II: Hillary Clinton and Benghazi

        The main theme of Ed Klein's Blood Feud: The Clintons Vs. The Obamas is that the Clintons and the Obamas do not just dislike each other's camp, they do not simply detest the other side - they are actively at war with each other for control of the Democratic Party and its nominee for president in 2016. 

The notion that these two rival Democrat families hate each other shouldn't surprise anyone. The thirst for power breeds jealousy and contempt between those competing for the same prize. Nonetheless, in reading Klein's book, I was haunted by the thought of what possible consequences might befall our country as a result of the inter-Democrat war between these factions; if we haven't been affected by it yet, Klein's book tells us it's just now shifting into high gear.

Many people assume Hillary Clinton will be the heir apparent of Barack Obama and that the media has already anointed her as the president in waiting. This analysis ignores the fact that the party has yet to nominate her. As in 2008, Hillary is most vulnerable from the left wing of her party. Ed Klein's sources tell him that the Obama camp intends to exploit this vulnerability once again and deny her the presidency for a second time.

The Clinton camp - for their part - grudgingly supported President Obama's re-election in 2012 for two reasons. Above all, the Clintons didn't want to alienate their party by breaking with Obama and sabotaging their own projected campaign for 2016. Moreover, when 2016 came, Bill Clinton didn't want Obama throwing his weight behind Joe Biden or John Kerry. On the contrary - Clinton looked for an opportunity to make Obama beholden to the Clintons and campaign for them. 

Thus, Clinton could be assured the left wing of the party could be brought behind Hillary in 2016. Later, I'll discuss Bill's strategy for making Obama owe him the favor of support for 2016 but for now, let's have a look at how Hillary comes off in Blood Feud.

In addition to being a sequel to The Amateur (2012), Ed Klein tells us Blood Feud is also a sequel to The Truth About Hillary  - an earlier book he authored in 2005. It is not necessary to read these previous books in order to follow the thread of Blood Feud; it more or less stands on its own. Although I have read and enthusiastically recommend The Amateur, I am unfamiliar with The Truth About Hillary although the impression I get from its synopsis is that Ed Klein painted a pretty unflattering portrait of the former First Lady in that book. One might expect him to continue to characterize her so in the new book - but after having read it - I came away with the feeling Klein had treated her with a great deal of sympathy, empathy, fair-mindedness - if not uncritically.

Hillary comes across as a tragic figure. She is caught between the insatiable ambitions of her power-crazed husband and those of his rival - her boss for four years while she served as state secretary - President Obama. You get the feeling she is a woman who really would like her husband to love her unconditionally and for him to support her agenda without strings attached. But apart from campaign-strategy, Bill Clinton is largely absent from Hillary's life. The only glue that gives the Clinton marriage chemistry is their mutual love of politics. 

To this reader, they seem like the couple that has nothing in common except when they go to the concert of that favorite rock group they both happen to like. Or perhaps, they both love that same college football team and only bond when the game is on. For the Clintons, that common hobby is politics.They are never close except for when they are in the campaign trenches together. 

Klein's sources tell us that apart from the 2008 primary race, Bill and Hillary have lived separate lives. She and Chelsea have their own operation in New York where they have a lavish mansion bought for 2.5 million. It has a ballroom, scenic gardens, and serves as the preeminent political salon. The home is used for large fundraisers and parties designed to revamp the Clinton machine and re-establish its dominance of the Democrat party.

Bill Clinton is largely absent from the New York scene. He spends a lot of time in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he party's-it-up at his apartment atop his presidential library, a monument to his legacy which doubles as the ultimate bachelor pad. Locals reported to Klein that wild parties happen there, while the library's restaurant caters the food and drink.

Klein makes it clear that Bill Clinton still has an active sex life with numerous women in the Little Rock community. His sources tell him that Bill and Hillary have not had sex together for nearly twenty years, especially not since the Lewinsky affair. Bill has tried to come on to her, but Hillary refuses him. They are rarely together unless they are meeting for political strategy. Even their visits with Chelsea are most often done individually.


Politically, on some level, Hillary is pushed and jostled between Bill and Barack, as a chess piece in their alpha male battle to dominate the Democrat party. Barack uses Hillary to do his own bidding even though it works against the Clintons' long term plan of getting back into the White House. Klein brings this to dramatic life in his treatment of the Benghazi fiasco. Here's the summary of who did what when the consolate called for help:

Hillary's aide, Cheryl Mills, informed her of the terrorist attack on the consolate at 4 p.m. on 9/11/12. Ambassador Stevens was reported to be alive though in critical condition at a hospital. Mills kept feeding Hillary updates while she contacted the other cabinet heads, CIA director Petraeus in particular. Hillary wanted to know what the CIA was doing to protect its people at the annex and her people at the consolate.

For the last two years, the American public has wondered why Hillary Clinton didn't move forcefully to protect the Benghazi mission. Klein's book tells us that she was under the impression that the CIA accepted the responsibility for keeping our people there safe because she was a partner to the CIA's secret mission to use the annex as a base to illegally smuggle weapons to the Syrian rebels (which would have the inevitable consequence of arming Al-Qaeda type militants there). The CIA operation bore all the resemblance to the Iran-Contra triangle that scandalized the Reagan presidency in 1986. 

Hillary agreed to give the CIA mission cover, by placing Ambassador Stevens' diplomatic mission in close proximity.  A tragic storm was building because the CIA weapons scheme was located amidst a deteriorating political situation in Benghazi in which America-hating gangs swarmed around the premises while Ambassador Stevens and his staff were placed in harm's way without the means to defend themselves from the coming assault.

Hillary thought she had a deal with Petraeus - she would provide the legitimate cover, he would provide the security. Sadly, when the you know what hit the fan, the armed personnel received stand-down orders (from the CIA) while Hillary spent precious time wondering why the CIA was doing nothing. In the meantime, Stevens was killed and the rest is history.

Klein's sources claim Obama called Hillary Clinton after a short while and wanted her to put out a statement that an offensive YouTube video was responsible for the tragedy and that the attackers were not terrorists but spontaneous demonstrators. Bill was furious. He told Hillary that this lie would not hold up with the American people. He begged her to refuse Obama's order, that this was a cynical ploy to misinform the public so as to not jeopardize Obama's re-election, and that the truth would come out soon.

Ultimately, after hashing it over, Bill and Hillary decided as despicable as the Benghazi lie was, their chances of a 2016 win was better served by going along with Obama's policy on the matter. Alienating the president over Benghazi would hurt Obama's re-election and the Democrats would take it out on the Clintons. Politics trumped doing the right thing.

And yet, the Clintons shrewdly fought a rearguard action against the Benghazi deception. Valerie Jarrett (Obama's political oracle) called Hillary and asked her to spread the YouTube lie by going on the Sunday talk shows. Bill got on a plane and flew to Washington where he begged Hillary to refuse. He told her, "It's a trap. They're trying to hang the whole mess on you!"

Hillary took Bill's advice and Valerie Jarrett had to get UN Ambassador Susan Rice to do the talk shows instead. Consequently, Rice became the focus of the public's outrage over Benghazi until Hillary made a huge blunder when she testified before the Senate committee early in 2013 where she flailed her arms in frustration at their badgering, and declared, "Whether it was terrorists or a guy out for walk, we have four dead Americans. What difference at this point does it make!"

A friend was with Bill watching this disastrous PR moment on television. Bill was horrified and went pale. With 2016 in mind, he said, "The Republicans will make ads replaying that line in a loop" with the images of the attack in the background. He added, "I would if I were them."

On Saturday, I will discuss Part III of this study: Bill Clinton and the deal he was betrayed. Happy Fourth of July!

Patriot Thought

Book Study: Blood Feud -The Clintons Vs. The Obamas (Ed Klein)

Part I: Anonymous Sources in Current Affairs

        Ed Klein's Blood Feud: The Clintons Vs. The Obamas is absorbing, loaded with tension, and the pages turn at the clip of a high-stakes soap opera. The characters are larger than life. In fact, they are the most powerful people running the United States of America, guardians of its present and shapers of its future. The actors fall into two camps dominating the Democratic Party who are at war with each other. Our future will be affected by the victor of their blood feud. Does this book sound relevant? Worth our time for summer reading? 

Does a bear... you know what?


       Books on current events written by journalists should be taken very seriously but there are a few things to keep in mind. For one thing, the authenticity of the work can not be measured by the same standard as a work of history written by an historian. Works of history treat subjects who are dead or who are at the very least out of power and can do no harm to the people being interviewed by the author. Sources do not mind being named. Documents are declassified and are waiting to be mined. A reader of historical non-fiction can expect a book of the genre to be well-sourced and (hopefully) annotated with notes and a bibliography providing the reader with the information needed to check the accuracy of the information and the plausibility of the claims made in the book.

      By necessity, books on current affairs are a different sort of product and should be treated as such. The more current the events are, the more likely the author will need to rely on anonymous sources. Ed Klein's latest book Blood Feud depends heavily on anonymous sources. It is his long-awaited sequel to The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House and chronologically picks up where that book left off - in the late summer of 2011, when Obama's approval rating first dipped to the high thirties and his team began to worry about his prospects for re-election.

      The Amateur was striking in its credibility. The premise of that book, among other things, was that Obama was incompetent and out of his depth in the White House and was a ruthless, mean-spirited character who cynically used people and threw them under the bus when he was finished with them. What made The Amateur so instantly believable was that most sources were named. For example, the author conducted a dramatic, three-hour, audio-taped interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright which formed the basis of a chapter in the book. 

     What makes Blood Feud most obviously different from The Amateur is its overwhelming use of anonymous sources. This is nagging for the educated reader who wants to know who said what. At some point the critical reader is inclined to say, "Come on...enough already. Name somebody, please."

     And yet, all is not lost with anonymous sources. The publisher has the sources and keeps them protected. In the absence of naming the source for a scene, Ed Klein uses a method called deep background to establish his credibility with the reader. Here's one example:

     Early in the book, Ed Klein paints a word-picture of a scene that took place after Hillary Clinton left the Obama administration in 2013. She organizes a luncheon with her old girlfriends from her Wellesley graduation class. They all meet at her favorite French bistro in New York. Klein's source is an unnamed woman in attendance. The upshot of the meeting is that Hillary announces her intention to run for the presidency in 2016. (Now most of us assume Hillary will run, but this scene is important because she, to this day, has carefully avoided making the announcement.) There are some other gossipy tid-bits in the scene. Hillary tells her girlfriends that "Obama has become a joke." She summarizes his incompetence with the quote, "There is no hand on the f****** tiller."

     The source for the bistro luncheon is anonymous but Ed Klein gives the reader deep background for the scene. He names the bistro; names the chef who prepared the food; describes what courses were served and which wine was consumed. He describes the outfit Hillary was wearing. Klein repeats this method throughout the book, giving enough detail to establish authenticity but not enough to sap the tension or slow the turning of the pages.

     This reader appreciates Ed Klein's sensitivity to the details of each scene in the absence of naming sources. Blood Feud is based on anonymous sources to a much greater degree than The Amateur because its events are more current than the events of the earlier book. Klein's sources for The Amateur were primarily people who had been involved in the various stages of Barack Obama's rise to power. They were people who had been used and discarded by him. In other words, they no longer had a relationship to protect. Perhaps they even relished being named as a source to get a little pay-back.

     By contrast, the people interviewed for Blood Feud are still close to the Clintons and the Obamas. They have jobs and relationships to look out for. The drama is still unfolding. The truth is without anonymous sources, stories that should be told wouldn't get published. If the reader is forgiving about the overwhelming use of anonymous sources, Blood Feud is an engrossing read that will leave you haunted by its implications. More on this tomorrow.


Patriot Thought