There’s really no other way to put it. Ron Fournier just really dislikes the president. I don’t know why, but it’s personal. And Fournier is clearly annoyed with anyone who defends the president. But how many times can Fournier write essentially the same article criticizing the president’s leadership?
I also loved this:
For months, the White House and its allies mocked critics of Barack Obama’s leadership, arguing that no president has “Green Lantern” superhero powers. Now these same people are predicting that Obama can salvage his agenda by waving a magical “pen and phone.”
The contradiction illustrates how far partisans will go to defend a flailing presidency, grasping at slogans and insults as a growing majority of Americans tune out. We witnessed a similar drama under President Bush, who set a low bar for public approval that Obama is close to matching.
President Obama’s approval numbers are improving and are not that bad. Rasmussen actually has him in positive territory. CBS has him at 46/47. And even Gallup and FOX have his approval in the forties. Let me remind you where Bush stood when he left office:
President Bush will leave office as one of the most unpopular departing presidents in history, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll showing Mr. Bush’s final approval rating at 22 percent.
Seventy-three percent say they disapprove of the way Mr. Bush has handled his job as president over the last eight years.
Mr. Bush’s final approval rating is the lowest final rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began asking about presidential approval more than 70 years ago.
The rating is far below the final ratings of recent two-term presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, who both ended their terms with a 68 percent approval rating, according to CBS News polling.
Recent one term presidents also had higher ratings than Mr. Bush. His father George H.W. Bush had an end-of-term rating of 54 percent, while Jimmy Carter’s rating was 44 percent.
But Fournier made that comparison anyway, which is how you can tell that he is consumed with hate.
Somewhat related… I had NPR on this morning and Cokie was asked, “Are some people just tired of Obama the same way people just got tired of Bush?”
“Certainly” was her response.
I turned it off before she could say anything else.
I am tired of people comparing the incompenent, willfulling braindead presidency of W to ANYTHING Obama has done.
I swear Obama spill lunch on his suit or fall down the steps of AF1 with more intelligence, competence and grace than W could.
Obama’s leadership has accomplished astonishing things that will create lasing positive change and responsibility for the degree that he hasn’t done more sits squarely with the GOP leadership and whackjobs in the House
This.
what he said.
Co-sign. On the bright side, I’m trying to cut down on the caffeine, and Cokie spewing Villager made me spit out my morning coffee.
Villager wisdom, that is.
With the missing word it reads like “Villager” is a separate language. In other words, it was fine the way you originally had it. 🙂
I’m tired of Obama because of how divisive his presidency had been on the left. I’m tired of having to fight right wing insanity so hard every single second for years. There’s nothing they won’t poison.
Neither of those things are how I was tired of Bush.
agreed and if/when Clinton wins…the right wing stupidity will continue, but the racial dog whistles will go back to being under reported.
to be replaced with conspiracy and man hating dog whistles, though I suppose they just regular whistle on the anti woman stuff these days.
Those should be called wolf whistles.
If Obama would just suck it up and declare property to be theft, call upon us to expropriate the expropriators, appoint Van Jones to head the EPA and Shirley Sherrod to head Agriculture, the left would stop being so divided. And give us the public option by a judicious combination of signing statements and executive orders.
It’s so simple…
Anyone who thinks Obama is remotely similar to Bush is either politically blind, or biased against Obama, or both. OTOH, Bush ought to consider it a real (and undeserved) complement anytime he is compared to a President as effective as Obama.
Fourier blows, and is pretty much the King Wanker of DC at this point.
Cokie is worse than dead. She’s irrelevant.
I don’t see Fournier’s numbers, as, by themselves, evidence that he hates the president. (Though he clearly does hate the president.)
I see them as evidence that when the facts aren’t what he wants them to be, Fournier is quite happy to simply make up new, more suitable “facts.”
In this he’s hardly unique. One of the legacies of the Bush presidency was the discovery by Bush and his cabal that they could tell one blatant falsehood after another and pay little or no cost for it. “We create our own reality.”
Since the facts are hardly ever what the wingnuts want them to be, this is now standard practice on the right. Hell, in 2012 Romney ran an entire presidential campaign based on this premise and till got 45 percent.
Why would an unimaginative cretin like Fournier do anything else?
Thank this guy is not with AP anymore.
That Fournier article is pretty amazing; the mask has come off and he truly does have an ugly hatred for President Obama.
Thank god this guy is not with AP anymore.
Not sure what’s wrong with me lately; I preview my comment and still miss my mistakes!
Should note that bush was at about 43 approval in gallup 2006 at this time.
The difference between Obama and Bush is that Obama has a chance to recover whereas Bush was in free-fall. Looking back at the trend, Obama’s ratings clearly took a hit with the spotty inroduction of the Obamacare site and the Republicans’ propaganda about the program. The administration can rectify that difficulty with work. In 2006, Bush had nothing he could do to fix his problem – the rotting carcass of Katrina was hung around his neck, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still festering, and the economy was still limping along despite the best spin buyable being offered. Have we all forgotten that the situation in the US was so wonderful throughout 2006 that the Democrats retook the House against most pundits’ predictions without the help of a crisis caused by the other party as Obama faced in 2010. Fournier is yet another incompetent Republican whining about the lack of wing-nut welfare for HIM.
Of the day? If by day you mean last 5 years, I agree!
The dude’s a fucking Republican. Do we need a reminder of his conduit to Rove during the Bush years?
KEEP UP THE FIGHT [Against those nasty liberals and/or Democrats]
Exactly!! The dude had a bromance going with Turdblossom. He’s also pissed that he isn’t where Jay Carney is now. Does anyone remember that part? The scuttlebut was that he’d be WH PressSec in a Cranky McSame administration.
Fournier is not a pundit, not even of the village clown variety. He is an outreach strategy to “independents” posing as a pundit of the village clown variety.
It doesn’t make sense to speculate on Fournier’s feelings about the president. He’s just doing his job.
I will waste enough bandwidth to complain of this and future wasting of bandwidth on that class of shills of which Ron Fournier (and others frequently meriting comment on these pages) are members. They matter little to not at all in American politics.
On the other hand, what my conservative friends send me comes from a propaganda site called Mr. Conservative. Not much on sophisticated logic is it. And no pretense to the punditry of Fournier and company. But it does seem to be viral. And does seem to draw nods, cheers, if not profound thoughts.
I take your overall point, TD, but disagree mildly on this one. What these guys (and occasionally gals) say does matter, because people in DC pay attention to it. The White House included. (Hence backing off of the “income inequality” rhetoric, for example.)
It helps set the boundaries of respectable discourse. And the acquiescence and cravenness of the pundit class is a significant part of why things that would have been laughed out of Congress, even by Republicans, 30 years ago are now central pillars of one of this country’s two major parties. The legislators dare not discuss the Emperor’s nudity when the pundits are furiously debating his choice of tunics.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Fournier thought he was gonna be Press Secretary during a Country Last Administration. Has never forgiven THAT ONE for robbing him of HIS job.
fascinating. guess he’s now part of the wannabee shadow gov that includes McCain as SOS
I think that it may be time for Fournier to lose his job again. To find out how to accomplish that just click the link below. There is also lots more information on this subject at that address.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/ap%E2%80%99s-ron-fournier-racial-arsonist-and-unethical-jo
urnalist