For the first time since he took office, President Obama’s approval rating in the Rasmussen Daily Tracking Poll has gone negative. Thirty-two percent of those polled strongly approved of his performance and thirty-four percent strongly disapproved. While it’s impossible to know for sure, the president’s lackluster response to tens of thousands of Iranians putting their lives at risk for freedom is likely a major part of the reason for his falling numbers. Ten days ago, the day before the Iranian “election,” he was at plus seven.
After all, it was this country that began the world’s long, often bloody march to freedom and democracy. Two hundred and twenty-three years ago, America first enunciated the ideas that the people are endowed by their Creator individually with life, liberty and the right to pursue happiness and collectively with the sovereign power to choose their government and their leaders.
Today, those ideas have spread around the world, leaving ever fewer remnants of tyranny. And today the people of Iran are at the forefront of that march to freedom. It is too soon to know if this will be a repeat of Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in 1989 or Republic Square, Bucharest, a few months later. But the vast majority of the American people are hoping it’s the latter, with similar results for the tyrants. I suspect they are disappointed in a president who doesn’t seem to know which side he is on.
