Polling has consistently shown a majority of US voters believe President Joe Biden is too old to serve as commander-in-chief. Now, a new survey provides insight into Americans’ perceptions of who is running things behind the scenes.
Conservative pollster Rasmussen Reports asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement “Joe Biden is not ‘running the show’ at the White House. He’s a puppet for a progressive left committee… headed by Obama.” Thirty-seven percent of people polled said they agreed “strongly” with the statement, while 16% said they “somewhat” agreed.
The result comes despite the fact the former president has only visited the Biden White House a handful of times since his inauguration in 2021.
Respondents were also asked a similar question about how likely they believe it is that former US President Barack Obama is “influencing the policies of the Biden administration.” Some 63% responded it was “very” or “somewhat” likely the former president has influence, with 53% of Democrats agreeing with the statement.
Former President Donald Trump has frequently alleged Biden is “controlled” by Obama, a widely reviled figure among political conservatives in the United States. “It's never been worse than it is now under crooked Joe Biden, and frankly, his boss, Barack Hussein Obama,” Trump seethed at an event in New Hampshire last year. Last November, he seemed to confuse the two figures in an apparent verbal flub that drew ridicule from the Ron DeSantis campaign.
Trump is said to despise Obama, with some observers speculating the real estate mogul decided to enter politics after being lambasted by Obama during a comedy routine at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011.
Despite the polarization of American politics and its attendant vilification of party figureheads, a 2014 study found that no single person exerts primary control over government policy in the United States. Rather, researchers found that the desires of “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests” were most correlated with legislative outcomes, while “average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
The researchers asserted that the United States would be more accurately described as an “oligarchy” than a “democracy.”