It's the Popularity Stupid: My Common Sense Take on Republican Victories in 2014

As a political scientist, I think the reasons for Obama's unpopularity are straightforward. He messed up his Obamacare website, screwed up with ISIS/Ebola, and left us with an economy with stagnant wage growth and low workforce participation. Things suck right now and the voters were right to blame Obama.

Basically, he is an incompetent, affirmative action president, incapable of doing the daily tasks necessary to succeed as president. He should have moderated his policies, parked his ideology, met regularly with congressional leaders, and spent less time on the golf course.

This was all quite predictable. He had no relevant job experience as a manager or as a leader of a large organization, much less an executive position in the federal bureaucracy. My take is that he surrounded himself with sycophants who played in to his enormous ego and allowed him to be lazy about the job of learning how to be president.

I met Obama while he was a sophomore at Occidental College and it never occurred to me that he had what it took to be president, much less be a successful president. He was lazy, into parties, intellectually frail, and a somewhat passive observer of life. He seemed like an average white guy to me. I'm not surprised to see that he has lost more congressional seats than any recent president, a casual review of his resume would lead any objective observer to think his time in office would be a train wreck.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.