Obama's Leadership Vortex: 'Effective Manager' Poll Rating Down 33 Points

A stunning new CNN poll reveals that President Barack Obama’s all-important “effective manager” rating has plunged 33 points since taking office. 

Political analysts consider the effective manager question a key factor for Independent voters who base decisions less on ideology and more on effective executive leadership. 

In December 2008, 76% of those asked said the phrase “can manage the government effectively” applied to Obama. In CNN’s latest poll, however, just 43% answered affirmatively–a drop of 33% over Obama’s presidency. 

Helping drive Obama’s downward descent have been a host of executive leadership failures. In 2012, the Government Accountability Institute released a bombshell report based on Obama’s official White House calendar that revealed the president failed to attend 56.2% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) during the first 1,225 days of his administration. Moreover, in the critical week leading up to the Benghazi terrorist attacks and the killing of U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three Americans, the White House calendar contains zero mention of Obama attending his intelligence briefing. 

More recently, a GAI investigation reported on in Politico Magazine revealed that in the over three-and-a-half years leading up to the Obamacare debacle, the president and embattled Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a single one-on-one meeting to discuss Obamacare. Sebelius disputed the report but never responded to Rep. Phil Gingrey’s (R-GA) request for a dated list of the alleged secret one-on-one meetings between Obama and Sebelius, none of which appear on the White House calendar or the Politico presidential calendar. On CNN, former presidential counselor to presidents of both parties, David Gergen, said the GAI report and Obama and Sebelius’s refusal to provide the list of one-one-one managerial meetings suggests that “there was no one in charge in the administration.” Gergen added, “What seems to me is there’s a case of near malfeasance here.” 

Numerous unanswered Obamacare questions remain about what Obama knew and when he knew it. Indeed, as GAI President Peter Schweizer put it in his Politico Magazine piece, “The launch of HealthCare.gov will go down in the annals of executive management as a case study of failure. Obama must answer for his absence of leadership.”

The confluence of Obama’s myriad executive failures are now taking their toll on Democrats heading into the Nov. 4 midterm elections. One Democratic member of Congress told the New York Times that Obama is now “poisonous” to Democratic candidates. Former Bill Clinton strategist James Carville says vulnerable Democrats like Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) should avoid campaigning with Obama. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake advises Democrats, “don’t defend it, say it was flawed from the beginning, and we’re going to fix it.”

The new Associated Press poll finds that a record-low 26% of Americans now support Obamacare.

Voters will render their assessment of Obama’s executive leadership and managerial skills when they head to the polls in 221 days.