Topic category:  Government/Politics

Personal approval is President Obama's last hope for re-election, and it is not only undeserved and unsecure, but dissipating.

The house of cards that is President Obama's re-election campaign will collapse if he is finally subjected to the scrutiny that he was spared when he was running for President in 2007 and 2008 and it is generally appreciated that he was a stealth socialist candidate who conned voters and successfully lied about his relationships with radicals and radical organizations, particularly ACORN.

No wonder MSNBC's motto is "Lean Forward."

The liberal media establishment does not want people to look back and learn what they should have learned before Election Day 2008.

In the 2008 presidential election Team Obama dealt with their presidential candidate's absence of military and executive experience and limited legislative experience by emphasizing his "cool" demeanor and described Republican presidential candidate John McCain as "erratic," a euphemism for "too old to be President."

Now that Obama's favorable job approval rating has plummeted to about 40% and it is apparent that he will not be enthusiastically re-elected by appreciative voters, Obama's only chances to win re-election are to split his opposition or to convince enough gullible voters that his Republican opponent (whoever he or she will be) is worse.

Mitt Romney is the favorite for the Republican nomination, so the word is spreading that Romney's "weird." That's a euphemism for "Mormon" and it takes plenty of chutzpah to use that tactic, since Obama's faithful Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is Mormon too.

So, whoever the Republicans nominate, the liberal media establishment will carefully scrutinize and Obama will run against on...character.

How ironic!

The liberal media establishment spared Obama scrutiny in 2008 and shortly before Election Day 2008 The New York Times even killed an Obama/ACORN/Project Vote expose that its national correspondent Stephanie Strom had been working on with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief, telling Strom to "stand down" because the expose could prove to be a "game changer."

The Socialist Democrat (http://thedemocraticsocialist.blogspot.com/2011/05/barack-obamas-personal-approval-rating.html), which describes Socialist Democrats as "people who...love their country and believe in Single payer Health Care, free education and Social Services for all its citizens," appreciates that personal approval has become critical to Obama's chance for re-election.

See "Barack Obama’s Personal Approval Rating Hits 72% In Battleground States":

"If you want to know why Barack Obama is looking good for reelection despite the our nation’s economic struggles, the new Politico/GWU poll has your answer. 72% of voters in battleground states approve of Obama as a person.

"The Politico/GWU poll found that despite 56% of voters saying they are concerned about the economy, President Obama has a 52% job approval rating. Obama only has a 42% approval rating on the economy, but by a margin of 48%-42% he is more trusted to handle the economy than congressional Republicans. Obama is also more trusted to create jobs (47%-43%), healthcare (52%-41%), handle Social Security (50%-37%), keep America safe from terrorism (55%-34%), and more Americans believe that he shares their values (51%-38%). The only issue that the GOP led him on was the deficit, and their lead was within the margin of error (47%-44%)."

The article asked a key question--"what is raising Obama’s approval numbers?"--and claimed that "[t]he answer can be found in Obama’s personal popularity."

The explanation:

"Obama remains very personally popular. Overall 72% of battleground state voters personally like Obama. Of this group, 48% approve strongly of Obama the person, another 24% somewhat approve, 10% were unsure, 4% somewhat disapprove, and 15% strongly disapprove.

"Despite the bad economy, these battleground state voters really like Barack Obama. Most Americans are not well informed on the issues. The informed American electorate is a myth. In 2010, 67% of voters got their information from television. The Internet has almost caught newspapers (27%-24%) to be the second most popular destination for information. 31% of Internet users viewed campaign videos online. This is an electorate that watches more than it reads, and Barack Obama plays very well on TV and video."

The article celebrated Obama's high personal popularity, but warned that it had been questioned and would continue to be questioned:

"Since 2008, Republicans have been trying to personally attack or delegitimize Obama through various allegations of un-Americanism. They aren’t doing this just out of hate. They know that their only chance of winning in 2012 is to make Obama less personally popular. They have been trying for years, and they still haven’t made a dent in his personal approval.

"When many Americans go to vote on Election Day, they aren’t thinking about issues or policy. Some people are voting for the candidate that they like best. The question do I want to spend the next four years of my life looking at this guy on television is a legitimate one in the minds of many voters.

"For as long as there has been polling a bad economy was the one sure thing that makes a president unpopular, but Obama is defying the odds. The President’s personal popularity is politically carrying him through these tough times.

"Sometimes the main question for voters is, do I like the guy? If Republicans can’t figure out how to get America to like Obama a whole lot less, they stand little chance of beating him in 2012.

"It’s simple. It’s obvious, and it’s the truth."

Both Obama's job approval and personal popularity have dropped since the article was written, but The Socialist Democrat's point about Obama benefiting from personal popularity is sound.

As I noted nearly a year ago in "Solving the problem posed by President Obama's high personal approval rating" (www.renewamerica.com/columns/gaynor/100819), "President Obama's personal approval rating is his ace in the hole and a reason that, policy notwithstanding, President Obama could beat, say, the twice-divorced former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who left the House of Representatives after being censured."

The current top three Republican presidential hopefuls--Romney, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Governor Rick Perry--all married just once and appear to be happily married. Bachmann and her husband have raised 23 foster children as well as 5 biological children.

Unlike McCain, the next Republican presidential candidate won't be being asked during the campaign to explain why his first marriage failed and have to admit it was his fault.

So Team Obama is unlikely to convince a majority of voters that he's a nicer person an his Republican opponent is not going to be depictable as a cranky old man.

Expect an ugly campaign and demand the whole truth.

If the whole truth about Obama and how he won the Presidency becomes generally known before Election Day 2012, his daughters, dog and outside jump shot won't save him...and America will be saved instead.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.