ORLANDO -- Events in Libya continue to spiral out of control for the Obama administration. Gallup released a poll earlier this week, showing President Obama’s approval rating dropping seven points in three days, settling at an underwhelming 46%.
Political pundits like to expostulate on former President George W. Bush, in 2004, being reelected with similar anemic approval ratings -- but polls two weeks out from November 2004, routinely showed incumbent Bush at or above 50%.
Obama remains static at 45-48%. Republican challenger Mitt Romney is at 50%.
Just a few days before the presidential election, things will get worse before they get better for the president. Email trails, leaks, and other sources of intelligence information concerning the attack on the Benghazi consulate in Libya Sept. 11, continue to trickle out.
Vice President JBiden’s priapic comment about one of the retired Navy SEALs, who died alongside U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was more evidence the Obama administration is circling the soggy boles of an increasingly important scandal. The lies and cover-up continue. But there are more and more eyes watching now. Inertia mounts.
Meanwhile, Romney continues to cut into Obama’s ‘swing state firewall -- inching ever closer in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It is looking and feeling as if what seemed the purest form of artist license a mere four years ago -- Obama going down in defeat -- could become pristine reality.
Meanwhile, Romney continues to cut into Obama’s ‘swing state firewall -- inching ever closer in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It is looking and feeling as if what seemed the purest form of artist license a mere four years ago -- Obama going down in defeat -- could become pristine reality.
One could imagine President Obama did not expect to be facing this situation closing in on Tuesday, Nov. 6. At the same time, life offers immense probabilities -- they are the grist of unfolding events in the life of men and women, including politicians. Nobody is immune to probability.
If Obama loses this coming election -- and it looks as if he will -- it will be loss set in motion months after the first African-American president of these United States was inaugurated.
Niche concerns, the kind that resonate in the mind of senators and representatives, paraded for Obama’s attention. Executive governance, and its concerns, as it were, did not. Obama ignored. He ignored the importance of private sector productivity -- the font of robust job creation -- seemed to gather little to no importance to the president during the entirety of his first term.
Now, it appears, the chickens have come home to roost. Still, President Obama -- through what seems a deluge of pomp and ego -- requests a second term from an increasingly impoverished American public.
Now, it appears, the chickens have come home to roost. Still, President Obama -- through what seems a deluge of pomp and ego -- requests a second term from an increasingly impoverished American public.
Electorally, then, victory has made an inept civil servant even weaker. And President Obama’s etiolating presidency has erected a nation foaming of pusillanimous regret and unease. In distant lands, things appear no less grim. Libya could have been avoided.
Those in high office turned their backs on those dedicated men in the field of battle -- harnessing the honors of war at their back -- and doing the rough work of a grateful nation. Their government forgot them. Libya will not go away. It will grow brighter, illuming more and more political turf.
President Obama is in electoral trouble. Romney continues to surge. And soon, very soon, a new page will be turned. History marches on.