Is Barack Obama now the most unpopular US president since Jimmy Carter?

Wonderful self-denying Question to Which the Answer is No, number 693 in the series, asked by Nile Gardiner at the Telegraph.

Barack Obama’s latest approval rating recorded by Gallup is 39 per cent. As Gardiner reports, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton had both been below this level at this stage of their presidencies, at 35 and 37 per cent respectively.

Which caused the Committee to pause over its decision as to whether to admit this question to the list, which does not normally include questions answered in the negative by their authors. However, the official criterion for inclusion is that, in asking the question, the author or publisher implies that the answer is Yes, which Gardiner does, before himself going on to show that it is not.

His reasoning is that, by this stage of their presidencies, Reagan and Clinton had recovered to above 39 per cent.

Perhaps what he meant to ask was: Is Barack Obama the most unpopular US president that we have at the moment?

Photograph: The White House

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• TarquinBroxted

  The difference between Obama & Carter is that Carter botched the Iran resue mission (it lost him the election). Obama will be linked with slotting Bin Laden, a vote winner. Remind me, why is the UK involved in Iraq, is it protecting oil security for Washington? Oh…that is right…we are exporting democracy. Bring Up The Water Cannons and Plastic Bullets!

• porkfright

  Brilliant, Tarquers old chap!

• stonedwolf

  Carter did not botch the mission (unlike some leaders he did not micromanage it) other than to let the Generals run it and when they botched it he braved-up and took the blame. It’s a minor thing but I think important.

  Obama has a different catastrophe to face: UN recognition of the state of Palestine. If he “let’s that happen”, however much it (like Carter’s woes in Iran) is out of his control, that will be the policy “failure” that’ll haunt the Democrats (however unjustly).

• pfbulmer

  Obama unpopularity in the US is certainly very high at the moment and growing as more and more people realised they were conned ! but what is unique about people’s feelings towards Obama is that he is internationally  thought of with complete contempt and utter disdain.

   Never has an US  president been so unpopular world-wide normally the overseas popularity of a leader is meant to be his one last saving grace but not in Obama’s case . Tony Blair was always more popular abroad than he was at home but it is completely the opposite for Obama, also Sarkozy mainly because it is a photo opportunity time !

  This international  hatred for Obama may seem irrational but it can be explained because the man seems a complete charlatan because he has misrepresented who he is , people just cannot forgive that ! He had an opportunity in the world to do so much good  that no other president has ever had , starting with of course the immortal full of promise words of ‘We can’ he grabbed hold of Martin Luther Kings coat tails and went along for a world, whirl wind ride, this is bit like saying you are God, and losing one’s grip ,falling off and waking up to out, you are Pontius Pilot !

  People do not like to be conned and misled !

  Even George Bush was not this unpopular because people knew George Bush was a red neck but no one realised Obama was one too, for obvious reasons,it is a bit like finding out one is colour blind   !

  The hypocrisy and double standards and the small mindedness of the man are quite staggering , he blames every one but himself and is completely obsessed with winning a second term and everything he has done has that in mind

  This is the man who has said WE CAN and that HE CAN but we find out he COULDN’T even get out of bed in the morning !

  He started a small mess and practised and ended up creating a real big one , he was after all on a learning curve !

  He cried wolf over the mexican  oil spill, failed to close down Guantanamo Bay, has even extended military trials, failed to investigate abuses in the US army and the off shore prisons and rendition programs in Iraq and Afghanistan, extended the indiscriminate use and program of drones and civilian deaths at the same time , sat like a ghoul and watched Bin Ladin on video being killed while he was unarmed and in front of his children, had him dumped  him in the drink and failed to see justice done according to the standards of the year 2000…..helped twist the UN resolution in Libya  from a cease-fire into regime change, went over the heads of the US senate to go to war to do it , tried to tell all the regime leaders in the world  with his mega phone holier than thou preaching  and their countries and economies and their people to step off a cliff into chaos , pulled the rug from under most regime leaders and burnt his bridges at the same time , lit of fuse in the middle east like an evil genie and then ran back grinning and grimacing into the shadows, while extremists and retribution has taken over in Egypt , used the same mega phone preaching with the Republicans and took the country twice to the brink and then watched it actually going over the brink which has been a big reason he  has lost the US  their triple AAA rating and markets went into free fall and will never be the same again.

  With this sort of record it is really surprising that anyone would want to even speak to the man or have eye contact with him at 100 metres .

  It is very likely that Obama will become increasingly marginalised and isolated both at home and abroad in coming months !

  Obama is politically speaking a dead man walking both in the US and internationally , US foreign policy has never been at such a low-level , there are very few countries that Obama and Clinton has not upset .

   Never has a president  promised so much and done so little and created so much chaos in the US and in the world !

  The word Obama is synonymous with disaster, in fact a Obama ! he is the ultimate ‘historical’ disaster ( a word he never ceases to use before every disaster !)

   President the like of which , one hopes one will never see again !

• TarquinBroxted

  1. The mission failed due to some idiot painting the helicopters and clogging the engines with sand, not due to Carters’s culpability.
  2. It would be a fool who did not recognise Palestine, a 2 state solution is the sole viable one.

• ewdt

  Absolutely and completely.

  Just a scenario but in the case that the US economy continues to slow and politics in Washington continues to become more acrimonious and ineffectual – Texas seizes its chance and goes it alone. Markets react badly and see the end. Other states follow to independence – some seeing little help from Washington and declaring bankruptcy to clear debts and start afresh. USD takes a battering and China and developing world can no longer afford to buy enough USD and internally invest. China falters as an engine of growth and the world economy goes into stagnation. Chinese provinces attempt to break free from the Beijing control amid much violence. China invades Taiwan to galvanise nationalist sentiment to hold the country together. The world lead by remanents of the USA defends (including Japan, South Korea, NATO, Australia, etc). US states learn that they can be independent and coordinate themselves effectively. Finally, through international trade organisations and regional free trade areas, the 300 countries of the new world order pull themselves out of the mire. The fires will be devastating and will live long in the memory. The world learns that superstates are uncontrollable, can not control themselves and ultimately crumble. Or ignore the last 3 sentences and call it armageddon!

• stonedwolf

  1. There’s more to it than that. There’s a widespread feeling the chopper pilots were plain simple cowards. But that’s nothing new with the Americans, McNamara earned his stripes by proving up to a third of American WW2 pilots were cowarding out of missions, his job was to prove it (he did) and get them back to the front lines.

  2. True, but but the fools have America by the balls… (kind of the point).

• pfbulmer

  Certainly if the US loses it’s world status as a reserve currency and there is nothing to fill the gap all these things could happen much  sooner than we think !

• http://nemoinsula.wordpress.com KlingonOffTheStarboardBow

  The US elected a man with almost no political experience on the basis of his rhetoric. Did you hear him say during the election that the USA was facing economic meltdown? I didn’t. I just heard “Yes, we can.” all the time. Was there any indication at all that he had any understanding of the depth of America’s problems? (1 in 7 of the population on subsidised food; vanishing manufacture, an obscene wealth-gap, insane medical costs, a state in total hock tothe industrial-military complex with surreally-high defence costs, a pulverised and decimated middle class and definitely the END of the “American Dream”.)

  Actually, he hasn’t got a clue, neither on Palestine or indeed Bahrein and Saudi Arabia or indeed pretty much anywhere. Is there any field in which he has made real progress? Unfortunately, due to the corruption of their system by money, most of his peers don’t have a clue either.

• http://nemoinsula.wordpress.com KlingonOffTheStarboardBow

  Bin Laden is irrelevant. It would have been better to let him rot than make a martyr of him. It was good (for Yanks, but it made me cringe) instant television but very bad politics.

  The fact that ther US couldn’t tip off Pakistan to go and arrest him properly tells you what a shambles the world is in. Pakistan receives BILLIONS of $s the US hasn’t got and is supposed to be an ALLY, yet the US had to do a commando mission.