This week’s report card finds agreement among our graders John Zogby and Jed Babbin in criticism of President Obama’s effort on the economy, which sputtered during his whole term.
John Zogby
A week of disappointing signs in both economic and diplomatic news. GDP growth in the first quarter is the slowest in years and wages are anemic at best.
Overseas, Syria is at catastrophic levels, bombing continues, and peace talks are dead. A bad week.
Grade C-
Jed Babbin
By the end of this week, President Obama should have felt “beaten down, left out and left behind.” Those are the words Hillary Clinton used to describe the many people who have drowned under the tidal wave of Obama’s faux economic recovery. Evidence of Obama’s epic failure in economic policy continued to mount this week with news that our Gross Domestic Product rose only 0.5% this quarter, reflecting a lack of consumer confidence and weak global financial conditions.
This means that Obama is the first president ever to not have presided over a year of consistent growth of at least 3 percent. Obama’s presidency ranks as the fourth worst ever for our economy, down there with Herbert Hoover who presided over the beginning of the Great Depression.
Early in the week, Obama said that German Chancellor Angela Merkel “was on the right side of history” because of her policy admitting hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees into her country and over one million to Europe. (Obama wants to bring at least twenty thousand here by year’s end.)
And Team Obama abandoned former CIA agent Sabrina De Sousa by refusing to invoke immunity and prevent her extradition to Italy to face charges related to the 2003 interrogation of terrorist Abu Omar. That will further demoralize the CIA clandestine service, another Obama legacy milestone.
Grade F
John Zogby is the senior analyst for Zogby Analytics and author of the upcoming, “We Are Many, We Are One.” 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]
