In the latest Wenzel Strategies poll, just 36% of American likely voters said they think the country is headed on the right direction. This is down from a significant majority who said the same thing early last year. But that’s not really news, since every poll number associated with President Obama has plummeted over the past 13 months, starting almost immediately after he took office.

Part of this is reflective of the times – the economic doldrums continue unabated. Part of this is a natural outgrowth of the way in which Obama campaigned for the presidency in 2008, and the way in which the national news media covered him. Seldom did reporters on the campaign trail demand specifics about Obama or his policy proposals, and he offered them even less often.

In the end, we always find out what our Presidents really believe, as they roll out their agenda in Washington. It turns out the country doesn’t like Obama the President anywhere near as much as they liked Obama the candidate. The terrible “right direction/wrong track” poll numbers demonstrate that.

This week, President Obama marked the first anniversary of his stimulus bill by claiming it has saved or produced two million jobs. The claim came after several reports that other Obama Administration declarations of jobs saved or created by the stimulus bill were wildly exaggerated.

Here’s the problem. When your poll numbers are in the basement, it is a clear indication that voters don’t trust you. The correct reaction is to hew closer to the truth, not veer farther from it. American voters decide what is truthful by comparing a political leader’s statements with what they see around them in everyday life, and there is little evidence for Obama’s job claims here in the real world.

Using polling to stop a fall

Falling poll numbers are always difficult to repair. And the repair process is usually very expensive – in terms of time, money, or both. In the political realm, President Clinton was probably the most successful in the modern era at recovering from a plummet he took in his first two years in office. He spent a great deal of time and treasure remaking his image, largely with the wise guiding counsel of strategist Dick Morris. He first did extensive polling to determine what the American public was thinking, and then he moved toward them.

Not only is Obama not moving to where the American people are philosophically, his public statements give the distinct impression that he does not understand the real reasons Americans are so against his proposals. After Republican Scott Brown campaigned against Obama’s health care reform bill and won the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, Obama said he thought the Brown victory occurred because his administration had not done a good job of getting its “message” out. The reality was exactly the opposite.
Using truth to rebound

In another realm, Tiger Woods this week is to go public with an apology for his wild private life. The apology will work wonders for him, and he will be back on the PGA Tour again soon. His reputation will always carry a scar, but he will make a nice recovery – because he will finally deal with this issue very publicly and very directly. He will be honest with the American people, who rightly feel betrayed. Americans love to forgive their public figures – but they have to honestly seek forgiveness first.

This is a lesson Obama has apparently not yet learned. Instead, he is treating the American public much the way the prototypical Ugly American deals with nationals while traveling in a foreign country: if he finds they don’t understand English, he just speaks louder.

What did you do to be worthy of your American freedoms yesterday? What will you do today and what do you plan to do tomorrow?

Sources: www.wenzelstrategies.com

About Fritz Wenzel:
Fritz Wenzel is President of Wenzel Strategies, a polling and communications consulting firm based in Columbus, Ohio, with clients nationwide. He is an award–winning political journalist who has worked mostly in newspapers but also in radio and television. He is an accomplished pollster, having worked for Zogby International before launching his own firm. His website is: www.wenzelstrategies.com
Yesterday’s Rasmussen Presidential Index had Obama at -11

This day in history February 18
2001 “# 3” Dale Earnhardt sr. died from injuries sustained at the Daytona 500.

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Democrats are in full panic mode.

Evan Bayh won’t be the last to jump and run. They’ll throw Barack Obama overboard trying to save their reelection chances, so forget about him being a one term president, Obama was a one year president.

Bayh is gasoline splashed on the smoldering coals of Obama’s faux presidency. It will ignite a consuming roaring fire that will burn Obama and his Party beyond recognition.

Losing everywhere

Recently New York Republicans won a special Assembly election in a 2 to 1 Democrat district. In Rhode Island Patrick Kennedy has been chased out. In Massachusetts a Republican won the “Kennedy seat” and another Democrat is about to quit. Obama is toxic and putting everything up for grabs this year.

This make believe presidency never really had a chance because it was built on lies told by people who knew they were lying to people who were either too stupid or too “thrilled” to demand answers about a man nobody knew a thing about. Obama’s puppet masters proved they knew how to get an empty suit elected, but don’t know the first thing to tell their puppet about actually running a country.
Having never held an actual job he brought no experience except voting “present” to the most important job in the world. Obama never was anything more than “Chance The Gardener” Peter Seller’s character in “Being There” the 1979 movie flaying the political world. Chance was an affable but mentally challenged man who was discovered and promoted by powerful political king makers. They were impressed by his ability to speak and seemly make sense although he was a babbling idiot.

The Democrats’ problem and America’s problem is that “Chance” is now the president but things will only get better for America and worse for Democrats.

Instrumental leadership; Administrative leadership

Instrumental leaders lead the charge up the hill and take the fort. Administrative leaders manage the everyday workings of the “fort” after it has been taken.

George Washington was that rare leader who was both an Instrumental leader and an Administrative leader. They don’t come around very often. Newt Gingrich was a great Instrumental leader but a failure as an Administrative leader.

Obama has surrounded himself with excellent Instrumental leaders. They were able to find dozens of Democrats willing to lie about being conservative in order to get elected in conservative congressional districts, but now “their chickens are coming home to roost” as Rev Wright would screech.

What did you do to be worthy of your American freedoms yesterday? What will you do today and what do you plan to do tomorrow?

Sources:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/12/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6202416.shtml

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/rockefeller-on-obama-prez-isnt-believable/blog-260273/

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/236516

Yesterday’s Rasmussen Presidential Index had Obama at – 17

This day in history February 16
1959: Fidel Castro, another Marxist becomes dictator of Cuba. He has been “re-elected” several times since.

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When pressed to finally become an adult, Peter Pan answered: “I shall never grow up. Make believe is much too fun.”
These lines come to mind with the news that Barack Obama is establishing a new federal agency to support the sagging Climate Change hoax.

According to the AP, Gary Locke the Commerce Secretary and Jane Lubcheno of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “planned to announce [yesterday] that NOAA will set up the new Climate Service to operate in tandem with NOAA’s National Weather Service and National Ocean Service.”

Considering that this is the same National Weather Service and National Ocean Service that couldn’t settle on predicting whether Washington DC would get 12 inches or 24 inches of snow just twenty four hours before hand, having these people takeover even more of our lives is not a comforting thought.

“The question is settled”

The damage this bunch will likely do grows still larger considering that NOAA is using flawed data to insist that the last two decades were the “hottest on record.”

The AP had no curiosity about how much this new agency would cost, but it’s a sure bet it will be millions and a better bet our tax money will be wasted on this foolishness.

What this agency might do to refurbish the discredited arguments of Al Gore the United Nations is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, the intrepid Obama soldiers on.

Mounting evidence proving man made climate change is a hoax means nothing to these frauds that we’re told to believe. Obama has joined them digging in his heels and insisting all of these lies are true.

Obama doesn’t want to ever grow up because he lives in his own Never Land where the Green Meanies despoil the environment with their SUVs and backyard bar b ques.

Two desperate sides coming together, a lying media and a dying administration

The general “puff piece” approach to this story from the AP: no embarrassing questions about justification for a new agency in the face of a $14 Trillion debt or the evidence disproving “climate change” suggests there might have been a quid pro quo between a compliant news outlet and an administration desperate for good press.

Let’s hope this can be stopped by frightened Democrats trying to save their jobs. It is a totally unnecessary expense at a time that we really don’t need another “mouth to feed.”

What did you do to defend American freedoms yesterday? What will you do today and what do you plan to do tomorrow?

Source: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6856813.html

Yesterday’s Rasmussen Presidential Index had Obama at -15

This day in history February 9
1950: Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had evidence there were card carrying members of the Communist Party in the State Department. Eventually he was proved at least partly right about Reds in the federal government and the New York Times. Looking back it is hard to believe anyone who still insists there were/are no Communists employed by the New York Times.
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The Pinocchio administration, led by their ultra narcissistic President, is flooding the airways with their lies – a coordinated PR spin effort claiming that they have saved millions of jobs –mythical figures based on hot air and nurtured by political expediency (even counting phantoms, robots and politically appointed government workers they are several million short of their fallacious projections).

Excessive fabrication of falsehoods is a hallmark of the Obama team and is utilized to cover the lack of a sound economic policy. In reality, they are the most anti-business administration in recent history. All of their convoluted attempts at job creation have, in fact, become job killers.

The costly stimulus package was virtually a complete waste of taxpayer’s dollars. It was a partisan bill designed to pay off election contributors, appease the left wing radicals and reward his political cronies. There is little evidence of significant job creation results – as indicated by recent jobless numbers.
The current “punish the banks” attitude is another potential job killer. This vindictive jawboning will only cause banks to shackle lending and stifle credit lines small business so desperately needs to expand and hire. A friendly reminder to Obama, Solomon slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass: jobs can be killed the same way.

The “cash for clunkers” program was a policy clunker. It did not create jobs, wasted more taxpayer dollars and contributed to huge sales increases for Japanese carmakers. It was a poorly run and is a prime example of why government should not intervene in the private sector.

My evaluation of Obama’s first year in office differs somewhat from his gratuitous grading. I believe he is an embarrassment as a world leader, inept as a President and presents an imminent danger to our national security.

He is, however, a World-Class Prevaricator, completely out-of-touch with the mood of the country and is deviously influenced by his radical czars/advisors.

Voters Unite. Support your common-sense candidates. Let’s put a stop to Obama’s wild spending proposals, replace his anti-free market capitalism attitude and eliminate his pro-terrorist behavior.

What did you do to defend American freedoms yesterday? What will you do today and what do you plan to do tomorrow?

Walter Olson is a retired concerned citizen living in Chatham, NJ.

Yesterday’s Rasmussen Presidential Index had Obama at –15

This day in history February 7
1986: After 28 years the last Duvalier is driven out of Haiti, ultimately changing nothing in the island country.

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There are really only two data points political insiders always want to know when they learn a new poll has come out of the field: What are the job approval numbers and what do voters say about whether the city/county/state/country is headed in the right direction or is off on the wrong track.

Oh, the other stuff is important. But the data from these questions is the very foundation of an officeholder’s existence. The first data point is an officeholder’s job performance rating. Everyone talks about that one.

You may have heard much less about the data from the second question, the “right direction/wrong track question. This data tells us how people feel about things in general – are we headed in the right direction or on the wrong track? Do people feel good about their situation and the situation around them, or not? Are people optimistic about the future, or not? The job performance data tells us whether and how much people blame or credit a particular officeholder for the way things are. This is why these questions are asked together.

Right track/wrong track

The “right direction/wrong track” question can be useful in forecasting political events. It also helps to look at similar data points from the past to see what happened then. For instance, in my most recent Wenzel Strategies polling, just 36% said they think the country is on the right track. The same percentage – 36% – said “right track” about the direction of the country in late October, 2006. A week later voters nationwide tossed Republicans from Congress en masse, ending 12 years of GOP rule in Washington.
I’m not making a prediction here – simply noting the historical record: a political atmosphere very much like this 4 years ago gave us a Washington sea change.

Driving off a cliff

Are we headed for a similar result this year? No one knows for sure – Election Day is nine months away. But with every passing week when there is no noticeable improvement in the economy and no moderation of Democratic proposals in Congress, a massive change becomes more possible. This becomes still more possible when you consider that a modern President’s second year poll numbers are seldom better than those of his first in term with the terrorist attacks of 2001 being a notable exception.
Considering Obama’s political wounds – which started showing up in slumping poll numbers not long after his inauguration – have all been self–inflicted, there is little reason for confidence he can or will change his ways to move the poll numbers higher. He said as much in his recent State of the Union message: “I won’t quit.”
That being true, neither will the plummeting of his poll numbers.

What did you do to defend American freedoms yesterday? What will you do today and what do you plan to do tomorrow?

Sources: www.wenzelstrategies.com

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/michael-jackson/sc-dc-obama-dems04-20100203,0,987524.story

About Fritz Wenzel:
Fritz Wenzel is President of Wenzel Strategies, a polling and communications consulting firm based in Columbus, Ohio, with clients nationwide. He is an award–winning political journalist who has worked mostly in newspapers but also in radio and television. He is an accomplished pollster, having worked for Zogby International before launching his own firm. His website is: www.wenzelstrategies.com

Yesterday’s Rasmussen Presidential Index had Obama at -6

This day in history February 4
2004: Proving “It” KNOWS better than the people do, the Massachusetts Supreme Court declared that Gays had the right to marry.

Have you read this week’s “Betcha didn’t know this..” page? It’s loaded with interesting little “bite size” items you’re bound to enjoy.

Comments on this or any other Collins Report essay can be sent to kcoachc “at” gmail.com