Opinions

Marc Thiessen: Obama’s legacy of failure

By Marc A. Thiessen  July 7 at 10:57 AM

In his 2008 convention speech, Barack Obama declared that as president he would clean up the mess created by “the failed presidency of George W. Bush.” Now many Americans say he has done a worse job in office than the man he replaced. A new Quinnipiac poll findsthat a plurality rated Barack Obama the worst president in the past 70 years — worse even than Richard Nixon, who resigned in scandal. That is quite an achievement.

And, to add insult to injury, a new Gallup poll finds that confidence in the presidency has dropped from 51 percent when Obama took office to just 29 percent today (4 points lower than Bush at the same point in his presidency).

There are two ways a president can drive his poll numbers down: The first is to make hard decisions that are unpopular but the right thing to do. The second is to be really, really bad at your job. Presidents in the first category tend to be vindicated by history. Presidents in the second tend to find that history’s judgment confirms that of voters in their own time.

Harry Truman left office one of the most unpopular presidents in American history, with his polls dropping to 22 percent in his last year as president. But thanks to the decisions he made — the Berlin Airlift, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine and the deployment of U.S. troops to Korea — he is now considered one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century. By contrast, Jimmy Carter presided over a string of disasters at home and abroad — from the Iran hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to gas lines and stagflation — and is still considered one of our worst presidents.

So the question is: Will Obama end more up like Truman or Carter?

Right now, he’s looking like another Carter in the making. Obama has presided over a recent string of disasters that make even Carter look competent. From his failure to enforce his own red line in Syria to the release of five senior Taliban leaders from Guantanamo Bay to the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea to the implosion of Iraq, the world is on fire — and Obama’s foreign policy legacy is in tatters. If Obama sticks to his plan to replicate his Iraq withdrawal in Afghanistan, things could get even worse abroad: Obama could leave office with Islamic radicals controlling safe havens in two countries from which they can plan new attacks.