When supporters of Barack Obama feel compelled to write articles hotly declaring that the president isn’t finished, as many have this week, you know one thing: The idea that he might be finished is very much on their minds.
In one sense, the argument is entirely unnecessary. Of course Obama isn’t finished. He’s the president, for God’s sake. Even if his troubles persist and deepen, he still bestrides the narrow world like a Colossus.
After all, George W. Bush was “finished” once Republicans lost control of the House and Senate in 2006, yet he managed to turn the Iraq War around with the controversial surge. And he was really “finished” in September 2008 when the meltdown hit — but without his support, the radical and aggressive bailout of the financial system wouldn’t have happened.
No president is finished until he walks out the Oval Office door. And besides, things happen that make it impossible for the president to fade into the woodwork. There could be a terrorist attack, or a natural catastrophe even more destructive than Katrina or Sandy.
But note: These are events outside a president’s control to which he must respond. His ability to act in these circumstances is really a necessity to react.
The issue isn’t whether Obama is finished. The issue is his pull.
First, there’s his political pull — whether he can leverage his position to move new policies. Absent a dramatic shift in his fortunes, it would seem his political pull will be weak at best going foward.
This week we’ve seen two absolutely horrific polls for him and one that’s only merely lousy (that one occasioned an unintentionally comic New York Times headline touting the president’s “rebound in the ratings”). But in Gallup’s daily tally over the past nine weeks, the president’s approval rating has hovered consistently around 40 percent and his disapproval around 50.
This means he has retained the support of Democrats, who made up 38 percent of the electorate in 2012 — and has lost everyone else. This is clearly due to the ObamaCare rollout, and it’s far from clear that “fixing the Web site” is going to reverse this.
The key hit Obama has taken is on his trustworthiness, not on his competence. The public believes he lied to the American people about the policy implications of ObamaCare — and once the public thinks you’re a liar, the impression is very difficult to reverse.
More interesting, though, is the question of Obama’s gravitational pull: Does he remain sufficiently powerful as the fixed point in American politics that Democrats have no choice but to remain in his orbit? If so, that would be to his short-term advantage, but a blow to his party’s long-term interests.
Yesterday, former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs made a stunning admission on MSNBC: “It’s very tough to see,” he said, “how the Democrats retain the Senate.”
That was an extraordinary statement. Republicans need to pick up six Senate seats to take control, which seemed like an insuperable challenge before the ObamaCare disaster.
No longer. Obama’s belly flop has solidified the likelihood that the GOP will take control of three Democratic seats — Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia. And for the same reason, incumbents are increasingly threatened in Louisiana, Arkansas, Alaska and North Carolina.
Meanwhile, Republicans don’t seem in much danger of losing any of their seats.
What a difference two months make. In October, amidst the government shutdown, people like MSNBC’s Chuck Todd were talking about a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives. That scenario seems like science fiction now.
So Obama no longer has much political pull, and his gravitational pull may be destructive to his party. In this regard, the president is very far from finished in terms of the damage he might do.