President Obama accomplished something historic with the take down of America’s and the world’s public enemy number one symbol of terrorism, Osama bin Laden. His accomplishment was so unassailable he got such virulent and relentless Obama critics as talk show guru Rush Limbaugh, Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to applaud him for his actions.
A number of chronic Obama bashers with varying degrees of enthusiasm cheered the president for the killing of bin Laden. Even more gratifying, he got near universal approval from millions of Americans across all ethnic, racial and faith lines for his action. But the cheers, applause, and praise — as politicians, star athletes, and entertainers have found to their bitter chagrin — lasts only so long; as the saying goes what have you done for me today…
Poll: Nine-point bounce for Obama after bin Laden news
With presidents this is especially true. The most cursory history shows that the monster bump up in ratings that Kennedy got for his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Ford got for the Mayaquez rescue of American seaman, Carter got for attempting to free American hostages in Iran, George H.W. Bush got for the Panama invasion, liberation of Kuwait, and Desert Storm, and George W, Bush got following the 9/11 attacks was fleeting. Kennedy’s rating later dipped for his handling of labor, and civil rights issues. Ford, Carter, and H.W. Bush were defeated in their subsequent re-election campaigns. And George W. Bush left the White House in disgrace, vilified and roundly blamed for dragging the Republican Party down to its worst standing in decades.
WATCH ‘HARDBALL’ COVERAGE OF OBAMA’S RATINGS:
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Obama’s ratings will also ease down eventually. But Obama well knows the history of presidential highs and lows after political and diplomatic triumphs. He cautioned in his speech announcing Osama bin Laden’s death that while justice was done, the threat of global terrorism did not die with bin Laden.
There will be other challenges, tests and ultimately blame for any failure to meet the obstacles that will be dumped on his doorstep. With the GOP presidential candidates jockeying belittle and discredit Obama, their attacks on him will get even shriller. Within days GOP congressional leaders will be back pounding Obama on their pet issues of health care reform, the deficit, high unemployment, and the gas price surge. The far right fringe will be as busy as ever spinning their borderline racist conspiracy theories about everything from his Harvard academic performance to more questions about his birth certificate. But that’s simply par for the course for conservatives.
More worrisome is what effect if any Osama bin Laden’s death will have on winning back some of the moderate and conservative independents that defected in droves the past year from Obama, and relighting the fires under his core Democratic constituencies, blacks, Latinos and labor voters. This is no easy task. In the days before the bin Laden action, Obama’s numbers were sagging.
This wasn’t just due to the surging gas prices, and jitters over joblessness, there were grumbles that Obama still was not saying and doing enough to confront the crisis of black unemployment, the assault on labor protections, pensions and wages, and was MIA in action in reviving comprehensive immigration reform legislation. These are the issues that are of major importance to black, Latino and labor voters. Polls showed that for the first time Obama had a double digit drop among blacks in his approval rating, and an even steeper drop among Latinos, while union membership had plunged to their lowest numbers in decades.
The bright side to this is that Obama’s resolute action against Osama bin Laden defused the major weapon in the GOP’s attack arsenal that they have used to pound Democratic contenders in years past and especially Obama in 2008. And that is the smear that Democrats are soft on the military and the war on terrorism and that Democrat’s softness puts America’s in mortal danger of terror attacks.
WATCH RACHEL MADDOW’S COVERAGE ON OBAMA VS BIN LADEN:
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Bush used that attack line masterfully in 2004 to beat Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry. Even out of office, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld continued to hector Obama on his alleged military softness and miscues in the terrorism war and his willingness to be conciliatory to the Islamic world. The terrorism issue played directly to the fears of terrorist attacks Americans have and still had some resonance as a GOP talking point.
The execution of bin Laden and Obama’s willingness to expand the Afghan war has pretty much made that a moot point for the GOP. However, as presidents that have rode momentary ratings highs with triumphs have found, what plays well with the voters a year or even months before an election can be quickly forgotten in the pile up of crises and political mudslinging that incumbent presidents seeking election inevitably face as the election gets closer. Obama won’t be the exception.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com. Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson