OBAMA'S DISAPROVAL IN POLL RESULTS

Polling may reveal the American personality. I am starting to realize that my biggest fear of polling may be wrong. For years, I have worried about poll results hiding the truth by a narrow selection of who is polled, how they are polled, and why. That still may be true. For years and years, pollsters have been bombarded the public with poll results that favor the political views of the people doing the polls. The feeling is so prevalent and accepted that we can hardly need to mention it. Some polling organizations are so confident they use the tag Republican or Democratic in their names, which immediately points out their bias, which invalidates their results but the media still buys the results.

However, another factor has evolved with modern polling that pales beside bias. Modern technology allows massive numbers of people to be included—unbelievably large numbers of people asked the same question at the same time. This means is it is difficult to narrow the focus. If pollsters asked everyone the same question, pollsters would have problems restricting the political beliefs of the people asked the questions. In a political sense, this is equivalent to gerrymandering legislative districts to elect those favoring the same politic philosophy as those doing the districting. The structure of our government means that our founding fathers were acutely aware of the problem as indicated by the diffusion of voter power written into the constitution going from the smallest of legislative districts to the entire United States. Obviously, their expectation was that our United States Congress would represent “the will of the all of the people” but of course, they could not prevent all bias as our Supreme Court decision Citizens United has proved. The very thing I am applauding, which is the power of modern information technology, through the mechanisms of money in the  hands of political parties has resulted in the dysfunctional Congress we have today. Our congressional mal function should serve as a warning; we cannot put down our guard; the formulation of the questions matters as does the handling of the data by the “for profit” media both of which can strongly influence the pollster’s bias.

The poll that stimulated these thoughts was a massive poll that indicated our President’s popularity is only 40% positive and further digging into the results indicated it was low because of his handling of foreign policy. His numbers are very low when questions are focused on individual trouble spots; Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Iraqi, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Crimea/Ukraine, and many other trouble spots. They are in the 30-percentage points in the favorable range. In stark contrast, my opinion of his handling of these trouble spots is over the 90-percentage points. I think he is one of the greatest is not the greatest president we have ever had. Why is my opinion so different from that of the mass of American people? I do not dispute the accuracy of the poll results; therefore, my dispute is with the general interpretation of what he has done.

He has handled President Assad of Syria beautifully; his objectives was rid the country of poisonous gas, prevent Al Queda from gaining a foothold in that country, and prevent massive shipment of arms to the radical religious sects finding for power in the country. He did all of that. As in Tunisia, he did the right thing when he prevented genocide without loss of American life. At essentially the same time, he had to contend with massive hate America riots across the Muslim world over some crazy hate film published by irresponsible American people exercising their right to free speech, which resulted in the death of four Americans in Benghazi. He is handling the thorny political issue in Egypt with finesse. He is allowing the Egyptian people to establish the aim of the “Arab Spring” swiping the region, which is to abandon the failed caliphate or religious government and moving toward democracy. He does all of this against a background of powerful Religious forces that are allied against a democratic form of government and uses that hate to generate hate for America. The religious forces are within our own boarders are fighting him, due to one political faction that is trying to use hate for Islam as a political wedge to gain votes for their side; pitting biblical law against Sharia law; if you love Christianity, you must hate Muslim. North Carolina even passed a law to that effect.

He is embroiled in the war now raging in Palestine between Israel and Palestinians Liberation Organization. People seem to not to understand that Netanyahu does not want a solution until Israel gets all it wants, which is uncompromising Jewish domination of as much land as they can take” while the world watches.  If they accept the “two state” solution Obama proposes that will means the world will have to draw legal boarders between sovereign nations. Israel could not build settlements in someone else nation as easily as it can build them in disputed territory as long as the territory remains disputed. Therefore, Israel wants a two state solution but does not want to admit it until they have everything. The PLO knows this but so does Hamas, the radical religious organization that has imposed itself as a “defender of Palestine”. What our remarkable president has accomplished is to have Egypt broker a deal between Israel and Palestine to stop the killing while not favoring Hamas; thus, remaining faithful to the dictates of the “Arab Spring”. Diplomatically, these outcomes are nearly a miracle and should open the gates to some kind of sainthood and not a low approval rating.

We should realize that the Egyptian government has just expelled Hamas from rule when they first elected a Muslim Brotherhood member president and then when he refused to follow democratic principles they forcefully removed him. Note, the people of Egypt removed their errant president, and not because the mighty bomb, bomb United States forced him out. Like everything else this president has done on the diplomatic stage, all of this signals a dramatic change in foreign policy, a dramatic switch from diplomacy by power to diplomacy with respect. This is the difference between responding to the will of a trench coated teenager with an assault rifle and magnum clip of bullets telling you what to do and dealing with people out of respect; a switch from realpolitik of Henry Kissinger to the politics of Obama.  

The American people tend to be conservative; however, they hated the politics of “oil diplomacy” as describe in the book, Overthrown: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (2007) by Stephen Kinzer. This author outlines three eras:  the imperial era, which gave us control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Honduras followed by the cold war era of covert action against Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Chile, an the third era where we toppled governments in Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Apparently, the American people loved all of these results but hated the harsh war and dominance of foreign nations by the Reagan and Bush administration.

Charles Krauthammer, the only intellectual of conservatism I know, in his book, Things That Matter (2013) explained as well as anyone the rational behind power politics—which is plain and simple greed—in the economic era in which we live; if you have the power you are justified in taking what you want. What Obama has done is introduce a new era of foreign policy based on compassion, as only a liberal can feel compassion. So far, it is working well, with the caveat that the American people want immediate results. They do not want to drop the bombs or send the assault rifle armed troops it takes to turn a proud people, of Iran for example, into bunch of scared sniveling cowards curled in a fetal position asking for forgiveness from us for thinking they had the right to build an atomic bomb. They should know we did not want them to do that. All of a sudden under Obama’s leadership, they are no longer building a bomb and are asking to negotiate with us for the first time in 36 years. Look at Syria; they no long have poison gas, nor is their country controlled by outside radical extremists and we did not drop one bomb. Look at Egypt; a friendly country moving toward democracy and away from religious extremism. They even help us negotiate a cease-fire in the Palestine conflict against the will of Hamas, a radical religious group. Victory after victory for Obama, but in the eyes of people, according to a poll we can believe; only 40% of Americans approve of what he is doing. The answer as to why they think the way they do is hard to understand.     

He could not prevent Putin, according to the dictates of realpolitik, from taking over the Crimea while diplomatically preserving the integrity of the Ukraine. The Crimea people voted to go with Russia and there are those in the U.S. who want to treat this as a failure; democracy is a failure in their eyes if it doesn’t go our way. In contrast, Obama is using economic sanctions against the powerful wishes of Germany, greedy for gas; France, greedy for military sales; Britain, greedy for banking interests. For one of the first times of using diplomacy and not force to counter direct military force. I look as this as an unprecedented display of Obama’s diplomatic skill equivalent to having Egypt gain status in the Arab world by helping, not hating, the U.S., to achieve peace in Israel. 

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