Jobs were up, President Obama’s approval numbers improved and he hosted an international nuclear summit, but the our presidential report card graders Jed Babbin and John Zogby were divided over the impact.
John Zogby
Labor Department figures showed robust job growth in March capping off a strong quarter. Manufacturing rose, as did the non-farm sector as a whole.
The automakers grew strongly and the outlook looks good for the rest of the year. At the same time, the president is hosting a nuclear summit and progress is reported on seizing control of former ISIS strongholds.
The president’s polling numbers hold at about 49 percent approval to 46 percent disapproval. [Pollster Stanley Greenberg has Obama at 54 percent approval.] He gets solid marks from both Democrats and independents and is brought down only by Republicans who are still recovering from his 2008 election and 2012 re-election.”
Grade A
Jed Babbin
Early in the week, Obama blamed the media for the rise of Donald Trump, which is the equivalent of an arsonist blaming his forest fire on the trees.
Then he spent most of the week in what seemed to be a last-ditch attempt to earn the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded in 2009 before he’d actually done anything. On Thursday, he hosted an anti-nuke summit and celebrated his yet-to-be- achieved success in a Washington Post op-ed. In that article, he said that his Iran nuclear weapons deal closed “every single one” of Iran’s path to nuclear weapons. He must have forgotten the ones that virtually require Iranian to cheat under the agreement’s risible inspections regime and the fact that, after 15 years, Iran is permitted to enrich as much uranium to weapons-grade as it likes, effectively guaranteeing it the ability to produce nuclear weapons at will.
D Minus
John Zogby is the senior analyst for Zogby Analytics and author (with Joan Snyder Kuhl) of “The First Globals: Understanding, Managing, and Unleashing our Millennial Generation.” Follow him at @TheJohnZogby
Jed Babbin is an Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him @jedbabbin
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
