News Analysis by Okee Sydney-Obiukwu
No doubts, the American polity fancies and adulates tough talk, especially during election campaigns. America loves to romance with the guy who tells her that China and Russia will be subordinated again. And that its dollar will continue to be the supreme-currency.
So it was that when a tough-talking Barrack Obama who had enkindled hope of a fearful America by liquidating notorious Osama Bin laden in a ‘Rambo style’, began to sound like a pacifist Jimmy Carter that, spin doctors quickly started shopping for another leader cast in the mould of a Ronald Reagan.
Among the lot who were jostling for the super-power’s presidency then, Donald Trump came across as the Reagan incarnate. He was brash, blunt, controversial and confrontational, even when not needful. And he also had the credential of accomplishment in the private sector, having made fame and fortune from real estate, as Reagan had done in Hollywood. So he became the hot bread.
But long after the familiar elections showmanship, Mr. Trump has continued to play politics of king of the jungle. Ever so quarrelsome, indecorous and off-mark.
As a consequence of these tendencies, President Donald Trump’s has continued to draw low job approval ratings that may soon spell doom for his already embattled administration. Really, daily scandalous leaks and the raging Russian trouble look good to truncate his term of office.
Trump set a new record low for a second-quarter presidential job approval rating in the history of modern polling, falling below any of his predecessors’ with an average 38.8 percent of the public’s approval between April 20 and July 19, a Gallup poll published Friday revealed. That number is below his first-quarter 41.3 percent average and far below the historical average second-quarter rating of 62 percent.
He has now become officially the least popular new president in American history, with only a number of other previous commanders in chief facing such low quarterly approval ratings throughout their entire tenures in the Oval Office: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.
Trump’s continued decline in popularity so early on into his presidency could soon jeopardize the insurgent, conservative agenda he had campaigned on throughout the 2016 presidential election: building a wall, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, vastly increasing immigrant detention and deportations by the millions.
Since entering the White House, the president enjoyed a Republican-controlled House and Senate seemingly willing help him realize his broad goal of making America great again. But his full-throttle support of the GOP’s health care bill and working with Republican senators wasn’t enough to get the legislation passed. He’s also failed to convince the Senate to outright repeal Obamacare without an alternative.
More obstacles are going to come Trump’s way as he pushes for the policies and promises that brought him to the White House. If he’s unable to win back a decent portion of public support and his Republican constituents continue to express their disapproval, slowly eroding his base, lawmakers will likely no longer be so keen to work with him.
However, he still has a chance to reverse this trend like Bill Clinton, who entered his first quarter in the White House suffering historically low approval ratings at the time, but he became more popular across the country as he began to implement his own agenda.
“I never expected that I could take on some of these interests that I’ve taken on without being attacked,” he said about his approval ratings at the time. “And whenever you try to change things, there are always people there ready to point out the pain of change without the promise of it, and that’s just all part of it. If I worried about the poll ratings, I’d never get anything done here,” he had judged.
Tough-guy Trump has been unable to hide his disdain over his approval ratings, preferring rather to go with polls showing his popularity at a considerably higher percentage than the majority of national polls and surveys.
Time would tell how far he remains on course. One thing is sure though, he has brought dangerous and resilient cracks on the walls of White House. Yeah! deep cracks that could sink his presidency.