Thursday, January 22, 2009

Will Obama put principal ahead of popularity?

To be a leader y ou have to be willing to be unpopular. Is Obama willing to put aside popularity for his principals?

He said he wants to look at government programs and cut wasteful ones. To do that is going to take some courage. Does he have courage? To be honest, based on his history, we have no clue. The media never really grilled him the way it is supposed to.

Lincoln and Bush both had courage. They often did the unpopular and they did what they believed in, and both took political hits as a result. Believe it or not, Lincoln was never a popular president in his time. And, like Bush, was re-elected with less than 40% approval ratings.

So, will Obama follow in Lincolns footsteps as he proposes? Or will he put party and popularity ahead of principal?

Only time will tell.

2 comments:

Nikki said...

nope nope he won't. It will be impossible for him to maintain this height of popularity. His 85% is already down to 68% and falling and I suspect that many-o-republican who crossed the aisle is seeing what a mistake that was. Duped. :)N

Anthony Palmer, Ph.D. said...

Point of clarification:

Obama's 83% approval rating was for how he was handling the transition. His 68% approval rating is for how he's handling his presidency.

Obama has a 12% disapproval rating, which is about 10 points lower than what Clinton and Bush had at the start of their presidencies. 21% have no opinion as of yet. Here's the link to the Gallup poll.