How Did President Obama Do in His Eight Years as President?

(modified question) - Do You Consider The First Eight Years of the Obama Administration To Be a Success or a Failure

NEWT Gingrich, one of the leading Social Dominators of the Conservative faction of the Republican Party had this to say a in late January of 2011 regarding the success of President Obama's first two years. Did he read the same poll? Is he speaking about the same America you live in or one he has invented in his mind? You be the judge.

In an interview with Human Events, a Conservative media, publiched Friday, Gingrich saidL "I think it's fascinating , you're sort of seeing the beginning of the third term of the Clintons because the first two years of Obama was such a failure in popular acceptance."

This CNN Opinion Poll, just released, asked the same question that is in the above poll. The results, on the face of it, were not that great for President Obama. From my point of view that is sad.The top level results are as follows:

What do these numbers tell us ... not a whole lot. The little it does tell us isn't good for President Obama. There was a large drop in those who thought President Obama was doing a good job from the middle of 2009 until January of 2010. Worse, there was an even more significant increase in those who thought he was failing which came from those who previously thought it was "too soon to tell" and possibly soon from the success column.

There really isn't much movement from 2010 to 2011 with some encouragement coming from the fact that there was no increase in those who that the Obama administration was failing. It would seem that President Obama, barring some catastrophe, may have bottomed out in his rating.

As boring as the above numbers are, they do get somewhat more exciting, at least to statisticians and pollsters anyway, when you drill down a little bit.

Normally in polling, the top level numbers don't tell you much and are very often misleading. For example, when health care was being debated and polls were being taken and reported, the Conservatives loved to Trumpet that a little over 50% of Americans (of course they said "most" or "all" Americans, but who is counting) were against some form of public option health care! This was after the single-payer alternative had been thrown overboard. Over and over and over and over they said this and it won over the public because the Democrats had glued their own lips shut and refused to fight.

The problem is, the Conservatives were really lying and lying and lying and lying, over and over and over and over again. Why, you ask? Because what they purposely hid fichrom you and which the Democrats, bless their inept little hearts, didn't effectively point out, was that somewhere around 8% of those against the health care reform were opposed to it because IT DIDN"T GO FAR ENOUGH!!!. What should have been reported but wasn't was something like:

• Favor Current Health Care Reform - 47%
• Oppose Current Health Care Reform Bill Because It Doesn't Go Far Enough - 8%
• Oppose Current Health Care Reform Bill Because It Goes Too Far - 45%

(I don't remember what the actual numbers were, but I do remember that the Conservative position was below that of the Democratic position once you took out those who wanted even more reform.) I bet y'all didn't know that did you. :-)

Anyway, you sort of that with this CNN Opinion Poll. I am sad to say though that the data I have only has information for 2011 and not earlier years to compare it with.

The good news for President Obama is that he seems to have retained the support of those drawing Social Security which should be important in the upcoming battle over the Conservative's attempt to dismantle health care reform.

He seems to have lost, for the moment, those getting set to draw Social Security. There are few people sitting on the sidelines.

Middle age folks seem to be a bit ambivalent even though the Success/Failure numbers look horrible. The reason is the number of people sitting back waiting. If environment does turn in Obama's favor, then these people will likely go to the Success column and even things out.

I have no clue as to why the young adults were not counted.

 This is not too surprising given minorities, who tend to support President Obama, earn on the lower end of the income scale.

 Here we find another constituency that has not abandoned President Obama; those who are more educated.  While I don't know the split between Republicans and Democrats who have attended college, I do know from other research that among whites who have not attended college, they tend to be Conservative.

THESE two sets of statistics are very telling and gives us understanding of the top level results. First look at Table 4 where Viewpoint by Party is presented. One of the results is expected, the very heavy bias against Obama by those who identify themselves as Republicans. On the other hand, given all of the press lately, I am surprised to find Independents giving President Obama a one point nod toward success. But even so, there are 10% sitting around waiting to see what happens. What did Obama, though, were the the Democrats; almost 20% give President Obama an F! I am guessing because he was too conservative

Now, here we have the same situation as when I wrote about the health care reform statistics earlier. 20% of the Democrats are failing their leader because he is being too Conservative!

Now, let's look at Table 5 which considers political viewpoint, which isn't necessarily related to party. These are really interesting, fun, and complex numbers. At first glance, things seem counter-intuitive; the numbers don't seem to agree with those in Table 4, the Results by Party table. Why? Look at how big the Success number is for Moderates and how much higher the Success rate is for Conservatives than it is for Republicans while the Liberal/Democrat numbers are identical. All of this points to Obama having a higher Success rate than Failure which, of course, he doesn't. How can this be?

Because of really boring mathematics, that is why. Nobody really pays attention to those "Sampling Error" numbers that you normally get with poll results; you know + or - 3%. Well it turns out they also give me an idea of how many people were questioned in the poll and, in this case, the number of Liberals in the mix were significantly less than Moderates or Conservatives, which had about the same numbers. (You can't see this since I didn't present the Sampling Error data.) But what that ultimately means is the Liberals carry much less weight in determining the final result than the other two so that when the dust settles, the mathematics works out right. (Now do see why it is so much fun?)

Now, about those numbers; there are surprises everywhere. Who would have thunk that 21% of those people who consider themselves Conservative would think President Obama has Succeeded in his first two years! I wouldn't have. President Obama must take great heart in knowing that he has at least one constituency where over 50% (barely) think he is a success with another 9% waiting a little more before deciding. Only 39% think he is failing; that number blew me away as well.

The one I wasn't surprised about was the Liberal results; they feel a might sold out at the moment. Now you can watch me turn a pig's ear into a silk purse, or however that saying goes.

I think these two tables tell a much different and positive story than the original numbers do. All in all, middle America seems to like the job the President and his administration are doing. It is the extremes that are dragging his numbers down. This is bad news for the Conservatives because it clearly shows that their only support is from Conservatives and those that identify themselves as Republicans. The Republicans have pushed away Moderates who support Obama, or, who are waiting and seeing, even given the results of the November 2010 elections. Couple this with the fact that the samples contained roughly equal numbers of Moderates and Conservatives and that there are more Independents than Democrats and more Democrats than Republicans. If the sampling technique was honest, then what we are looking at is the distribution of the whole population. What this tells me is that the Conservative's hold on office is tenuous at best and Obama's prospects should be good.

I saved the worst statistic for last. It's enough to make you weep. At least I hope you are weeping. To see that kind of dichotomy is extremely disturbing to me. Even though the issue of President Obama being our first black president has been suppressed in the public forum, there is apparently a stark difference between what White America thinks and what the rest of America thinks of Obama's performance.

In my view and knowledge of statistics, the fact that President Obama is black makes a major difference on what kind of job Americans think about his job performance. See that only 49% of Whites think he is doing a good job while 82% of non-Whites (not just Blacks who comprise about 13% the U.S. population) tells me the color of the President's skin DOES matter. And that truth makes me very sad for this country.

MANY THINGS HAVE CHANGED in the several months since I last laid pen to this hub. From where I sit, Obama's accomplishments increased yet his poll numbers plummet; oh well, you can't have your cake and eat it to, they say.

• Obama wanted a clean debt ceiling increase to pay for past obligations and prevent risking America's credit while putting the fight for spending cuts and tax changes where it belongs; in the debate for the 2012 budget
• The Conservatives wanted to continue fulfilling their public pledge to destroy Obama's Presidency and decided to risk America's credit rating by demanding, until the very last possible second, that the deficit be balanced by putting the country into another recession through cutting so much in spending without increasing revenue, that was the only possible outcome.
• The result was that Obama basically got what he wanted; an almost clean increase in the debt ceiling with spending cuts that would have been agreed to in the budget cutting exercise to follow anyway. The Republicans got what they wanted; a damaged Obama because their tactics caused America to have its credit rating downgraded for the first time in history and, as the Conservatives well know, while they may take some flak for causing it, it will be the President, his fault or not, who will catch the brunt of the public ire; Obama's poll numbers went down.

The Lybian Rebels finally gained the upper hand in Lybia. They haven't found Ghadaffi yet, but it is only a matter of time. While I doubt Obama's poll numbers will go down from this, I also doubt they will go up even though this outcome, I feel, is a direct result of his policy.

• Obama orchestrated the international isolation of Qaddafi
• Obama knew America could not determine the outcome; he also knew America could not afford direct involvement; he also knew we could not be involved; he also knew this was more a European issue; he also knew they couldn't do it on their own nor did they want to; and finally he knew it was damn well time they, the Europeans finally took some responsibilities.
• All of the above drove Obama's "lead from behind" policy for which he has been roundly criticized from the left and the right, but nevertheless, was exactly the right thing to do.
• NATO and the Europeans finally did take ownership of something, after America set the stage. And, after some initial stumbling, did, with the US helping, a very credible job in preparing the way for the opposition to coalesce, organize, train, equip, then counterattack in coordination with NATO. Why people and politicians thought this can happen in 30 or 60 days is beyond me. These are the same people and politicians,of course, who thought the American Revolution or American Civil War would be over in a couple of month as well, don't you know.
• Obama's policy obtained the desired outcome at minimal cost both in American treasure and lives. For this, he will get next to no credit; yet the ramifications may be profound when we look down the road to Syria and Iran.

President Obama has learned well from the Bush Katrina debacle. He and FEMA have been well out in front, despite the protestations of Rep. Ron Paul, of Hurricane Irene and even took time to react properly to that little 5.9 jolt felt in Washington D.C. Even here, I don't think Obama's numbers will go up, but I do think it may stop his momentum downward.

Amid all of the tragedy, there may be a silver lining for Obama, for a while. Killing #2 in the al-Qaida hierarchy helps plus, we are coming out of the Summer doldrums for the stock market; all good things for the President. There is that whale in the room though, the Congressional budget super committee, just looming out there ready to send his numbers spiraling downward once again.

A YEAR HAS PASSED and it is less than three months before the November 2012 Presidential elections. The Congressional Super Committee failed because Conservatives refused to give a millimeter on the question of tax increases on the rich. There were several reasonable options presented from outside experts and both sides appeared to give them short shrift. Nevertheless, Conservatives got something else to blame Obama for, to whit: their failure to get the job done.

President Obama gave the order to revitalize the hunt for Osama bin Laden, terrorists, and terrorism outside the Iraq theater from a moribund Bush program. This has led to the destruction of 90% of al-Qaida's top leadership. He also gave the order to proceed with the mission to capture or kill bin Laden when they finally hunted him down only to be roundly criticized and ridiculed by Conservatives who don't know what they are talking about.

In the months following my last update, President Obama put forward a multitude of job creation programs through the Senate, none of which made it passed the Conservative abuse of the filibuster. His only successes have been an effective use of the Executive Order to implement programs not needing Congressional approval; again accompanied by more howls of outrage by Conservatives over a common presidential practice. Fortunately, the criticizm was short-lived.

Many years have passed. Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump for the presidency in 2016 and, as we are still finding out, the Russians had a lot to do with that. (Clinton ran a horrible campaign and had huge trust issues, but still should have won, barely.) Donald Trump has spent the last 18 months giving mostly false, false, and outright lies to the nation 4 or 5 times a day. It is estimated now that by the time is term is up, he will have done one of those over 10,000 times - a mind-numbing number.

America is at a the front-end of a Trump inspired trade war with our allies and, in a major contrast to President Obama, has become the laughingstock, albeit a very dangerous one, of the world. I can't believe I would ever say that about an American president, but know that I am being nice.

President Obama ended the Iranian nuclear program near the end of his time in office, joined all but two third world nations in a Paris Climate Accord that would have very possibly stopped the runaway climate change that is just around the corner, and had made major strides in reducing America's carbon footprint.

Donald Trump, whose goal in office is to reverse almost every good work Obama created, has pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal giving the Iranians the green light to restart their program again 1 and pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord putting the world at much greater risk of catastrophic destruction from climate change.

President Obama spent his eight years repairing the very damaged relationships caused by President Bush with our allies. We became a well-liked, and more importantly, trusted nation.

NO MORE! It took Donald Trump less than 18 months to destroy eight-years of successful diplomacy - we are officially a nation alone in the world.