And Barack Obama's poll numbers have slid almost 10% already. According to the latest Gallup Poll, the new president's approval rating of 68% in January has slipped now to 63%, about average for recent new presidents one month in.
What isn't average, however, is Obama's new disapproval rating -- 24%, or 50% higher than the 16% average for a month-old new presidency.
And it's twice the 12% disapproval rate that Obama had last month.
While liberal and independent support has held fairly steady, the rookie chief executive's approval among Republicans has plunged from 41% to 30%, presumably tied at least somewhat to growing awareness of the spending program. The drop has been especially steep among conservatives .President Barack Obama's approval has dropped in his first month, from 36% at inauguration to 22% now.
Additionally, Obama's support has weakened among middle-class Americans, those touted during the campaign as benefiting from his promised tax cuts. Among that working crowd, Obama's approval fell from 69% to 58%.
Tonight's speech before a joint session of Congress and a nationwide television audience will give the new 47-year-old president an opportunity to make his case, not just for his already-signed but still controversial economic stimulus package but for his own evolving style of executive leadership.
And to possibly put the crumpled Cabinet nominations of recent weeks behind him.
After 30 days, the Gallup Poll shows Obama has about the same approval rating as did George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, the man whose eight years in office the Illinois senator so often denounced as destructive during the recent campaign.
What's surprising, as the astute Don Surber points out this morning, is that the gap between approval and disapproval is worse now for Obama than it was for the newly departed Texan after his first month. Bush's differential gap was 41 points between approval and disapproval.
The new Gallup survey involved 1,614 adult Americans between Feb. 19-21 with a margin of error of +/-3%.
Interesting note, while busy dicking around on the internet today at work, one of my pharmacists was looking at guns. Apparently this is his first time seriously considering buying one and he actually said (as hyperbole, I am certain) if he DID buy one, he'd be "over Obama's desk." Which is a remark regarding an incident at the pharmacy when someone stole my pen and I went over the counter at them. *ahem* nothing happened, it was all in fun, I assure you. but people no longer gank my nice pens.
Obama approval ratings rise 17 percent after speechRAW STORY Published: Wednesday February 25, 2009
A flash CBS News poll conducted Tuesday evening found broad increases of support in almost all areas surrounding President Barack Obama's approval of the economy.
In fact, Obama's approval rating for handling the economic crisis leapt 17 percent after the speech among those who watched it, from 63 to 80 percent.
51 percent of viewers felt that Obama's economic plans would help them personally, with 36 percent before the speech -- and increase of 15 percent.
"Seventy-five percent of speech watchers now say they were able to get a good understanding of President Obama’s economic plans, compared to 58 percent before the speech," CBS wrote. "Seventy-four percent of speech watchers think President Obama’s plans will make the economy better. Eleven percent think they will make them worse, while 15 percent think they will make no difference."
Among those who watched the speech, 80 percent said they were optimistic about the next four years as opposed to 71 percent beforehand. Both figures were a far cry from the ratings of erstwhile President George W. Bush.
"Seventy-six percent of speech watchers think Barack Obama’s economic plans will help the housing crisis," CBS said. "Twenty-four percent think they will not."
No, Sammitch, MEM clearly showed us. He's never, ever, started a new thread to distract us from an inconvenient fact. And he's definitely never posted a link from a discredited site like Raw Story or Media Matters to prove his point.
I think we should close the forum down. There's really no way to recover from his win this time.
Interesting. Douglas Schoen, formerly a pollster for President Clinton, and Scott Rasmussen, of Rasmussen Reports, an independent national polling company, have analyzed the data and they think Obama's approval really is crashing violently:
It is simply wrong for commentators to continue to focus on President Barack Obama's high levels of popularity, and to conclude that these are indicative of high levels of public confidence in the work of his administration. Indeed, a detailed look at recent survey data shows that the opposite is most likely true. The American people are coming to express increasingly significant doubts about his initiatives, and most likely support a different agenda and different policies from those that the Obama administration has advanced. Polling data show that Mr. Obama's approval rating is dropping and is below where George W. Bush was in an analogous period in 2001. Rasmussen Reports data shows that Mr. Obama's net presidential approval rating -- which is calculated by subtracting the number who strongly disapprove from the number who strongly approve -- is just six, his lowest rating to date.
Overall, Rasmussen Reports shows a 56%-43% approval, with a third strongly disapproving of the president's performance. This is a substantial degree of polarization so early in the administration. Mr. Obama has lost virtually all of his Republican support and a good part of his Independent support, and the trend is decidedly negative.
A detailed examination of presidential popularity after 50 days on the job similarly demonstrates a substantial drop in presidential approval relative to other elected presidents in the 20th and 21st centuries. The reason for this decline most likely has to do with doubts about the administration's policies and their impact on peoples' lives.
And although a narrow majority remains confident in Mr. Obama's goals and overall direction, 45% say they do not have confidence, a number that has been growing since the inauguration less than two months ago. With three-quarters saying that they expect the economy to get worse, it is hard to see these numbers improving substantially.
Juan Williams is on O'Reilly right now and says that Obama's approval among independents is, in fact, crashing violently and that Obama is running out of easy tricks to keep his popularity up.
Obama — Just Average: Polls show Obama's popularity during his first 100 days is right in the middle of other new presidents' scores.
In other words, as we pointed out before, all these Obama approval ratings are meaningless. He's basically enjoying the "honeymoon" period that most, if not all, new presidents get. Wonder why the center-left press keeps touting them?
Obama — Just Average: Polls show Obama's popularity during his first 100 days is right in the middle of other new presidents' scores.
In other words, as we pointed out before, all these Obama approval ratings are meaningless. He's basically enjoying the "honeymoon" period that most, if not all, new presidents get. Wonder why the center-left press keeps touting them?
So despite the hard-sell by the Obama-hyping media... Obama still barely squeaks by.
It scares the piss out of me what he can do to this country in the next 3 years and 9 months. And what he has already done, that we have not begun to feel the seismic after-effects of.
I can emphasize with you WB. About 8 years ago I was afraid things were going to tank badly with the newly elected President. It sucked being right. Maybe we'll luck out and you'll be wrong.
I can emphasize with you WB. About 8 years ago I was afraid things were going to tank badly with the newly elected President. It sucked being right. Maybe we'll luck out and you'll be wrong.
The difference is Bush was scrutinized endlessly by the media.
And conversely, even when Obama makes the hypocritical and disastrous mistakes, there is absolutely no accountability or objective reporting of it by his brother Soviet comrades in the liberal media, who continue to behave as a Public Relations extension of the Obama white house.
I can emphasize with you WB. About 8 years ago I was afraid things were going to tank badly with the newly elected President. It sucked being right. Maybe we'll luck out and you'll be wrong.
The difference is Bush was scrutinized endlessly by the media.
And conversely, even when Obama makes the hypocritical and disastrous mistakes, there is absolutely no accountability or objective reporting of it by his brother Soviet comrades in the liberal media, who continue to behave as a Public Relations extension of the Obama white house.
Well we'll have to agree to dissagree about the media to a degree. I think you tend to generallize to much and I know you geniunly feel that way but Obama does get scrutinized by the press. While some go softer than they did on Bush others have gone harder. It may not balance out totally but does it really rate the soviet comrade talk?
[Well we'll have to agree to dissagree about the media to a degree. I think you tend to generallize to much and I know you geniunly feel that way but Obama does get scrutinized by the press. While some go softer than they did on Bush others have gone harder. It may not balance out totally but does it really rate the soviet comrade talk?
You mean the way a New York Times reporter asked Obama what "enchanted" him most in his first 100 days as president?
A hardball question, that.
In 13 questions (pre-selected, with an ordered list for Obama to call on, by his handlers) that press conference was a joke. Long-winded filibuster answers by Obama, and not allowed any follow up. I watched the CNN coverage, and all the post-conference pundits evaluating Obama's answers were all Wow, great, a-plus performance!..."
I flipped over to FOX news an hour later, and while they still had a liberal counter-point, they also pointed out that Obama's people pre-selected who Obama would call on, that no follow-up was allowed of Obama, and that amidst all the softball questions, in an entire hour not one question was laid on Obama about the sinking economy, the auto bailouts, high unemployment, or any of Obama's hypocritical actions in recent months that are polar opposite of his campaign promises.
The closest was some guy from Black Entertainment Channel, who asked Obama about the perspective of black Americans in particular in our current economic recession.
Please, oh please, tell me where the liberal media has done anything other than run P.R. and cover for Obama.
As Obama has accumulated more debt in 3 months than Bush accumulated in 8 years, as he has labelled our veterans as potential terrorists to be watched closely, as he has promised "a higher standard" for his cabinet appointments, and instead appointed tax evaders. And how in the few positions Obama has taken a sensible stance, he has adopted the actions and rhetoric of George W. Bush, the same actions and rhetoric he was so critical of during the campaign.
The same media that hyped every negative statement about Bush, and every last potential scandalous allegation against Bush, and about McCain during the campaign, has suddenly grown silent about the many proven hypocritical and nation-endangering actions of Obama and his administration.
[Well we'll have to agree to dissagree about the media to a degree. I think you tend to generallize to much and I know you geniunly feel that way but Obama does get scrutinized by the press. While some go softer than they did on Bush others have gone harder. It may not balance out totally but does it really rate the soviet comrade talk?
You mean the way a New York Times reporter asked Obama what "enchanted" him most in his first 100 days as president?
A hardball question, that.
Yeah that one was very softball I even rolled my eyes
Quote:
In 13 questions (pre-selected, with an ordered list for Obama to call on, by his handlers) that press conference was a joke. Long-wided filibuster answers by Obama, and not allowed any follow up. I watched the CNN coverage, and all the pundits were all Wow, great, a-plus performance!..."
I flipped over to FOX news an hour later, and while they still had a liberal counter-point, they also pointed out that Obama's people pre-selected who Obama would call on, that no follow-up was allowed, and that amidst all the softball questions, in an entire hour not one question was laid on him about the sinking economy, the auto bailouts, high unemployment, or any of Obama's hypocritical actions that are polar opposite of his campaign promises.
The closest was some guy from Black Entertainment Channel, who asked Obama about the perspective of black Americans in particular in our current economic recession.
Please, oh please, tell me where the liberal media has done anything other than run P.R. and cover for Obama.
As Obama has accumulated more debt in 3 months than Bush accumulated in 8 years, as he has labelled our veterans as potential terrorists to be watched closely, as he has promised "a higher standard" for his cabinet appointments, and instead appointed tax evaders. And how in the few positions Obama has taken a sensible stance, he has adopted the actions and rhetoric of George W. Bush, the same actions and rhetoric he was so critical of during the campaign.
The same media that hyped every negative statement about Bush, and every last potential scandalous allegation against Bush, and about McCain during the campaign, has suddenly grown silent about the many proven hypocritical and nation-endangering actions of Obama and his administration.
"Wow, great, A-plus !"
Damn, that's some hard journalism.
The stories have been reported though WB. The problems with his cabinet picks, lobbyists, tax evaders and all that. Granted stuff like the Homeland Security memo doesn't have the spin you think it should but it was reported as well as the negative reaction to it. I do agree with much you have to say about the press conference. He certainly hasn't raised the bar on taking questions. That might cost him if he keeps it up.
Yeah, as relatively minor stories, while the center-left press keeps trying to write front page stories about how Bush employees may have written memos that allowed waterboarding.
Yeah, as relatively minor stories, while the center-left press keeps trying to write front page stories about how Bush employees may have written memos that allowed waterboarding.
Most if not all the stories WB mention were all front page news on the papers and news sites I read so it doesn't appear minor to me.
Yeah, as relatively minor stories, while the center-left press keeps trying to write front page stories about how Bush employees may have written memos that allowed waterboarding.
Most if not all the stories WB mention were all front page news on the papers and news sites I read so it doesn't appear minor to me.
Do you really beleive this, M E M ?
With Bush, and with McCain as well during the campaign, every slightest allegation got maximum coverage for at least a week.
Conversely, the same media gives only token mention of Obama's mistakes and hypocritical actions. Covering it every night for a week when it's Bush, and giving it the briefest mention when it's Obama, is not anything resembling equal coverage.
Originally Posted By: M E M
The stories have been reported though WB. The problems with his cabinet picks, lobbyists, tax evaders and all that. Granted stuff like the Homeland Security memo doesn't have the spin you think it should but it was reported as well as the negative reaction to it. I do agree with much you have to say about the press conference. He certainly hasn't raised the bar on taking questions. That might cost him if he keeps it up.
There's a huge difference, HUGE, between giving mention to these things, and giving Obama the same proportionate scrutiny as McCain. And certainly, Obama's truly radical actions (and his still-uninvestigated past) warrant the scrutiny.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama faces growing concerns among voters over government spending, the auto industry bailout and other economic policies, according to two opinion polls released on Wednesday.
Obama, who took office in January, remains popular with Americans, although his overall job approval rating slipped to 56 percent, down 5 points from April, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
But 58 percent of respondents said Obama and Congress should focus on keeping the budget deficit down, even if takes longer for the economy to recover. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal deficit could top $1.8 trillion this fiscal year -- by far a record.
Nearly 70 percent said they had concerns about federal intervention in the economy, including Obama's decision to take an ownership stake in General Motors and the prospect of more government involvement in healthcare. Obama has made healthcare reform a top priority of his administration.
Just 37 percent of respondents said Obama was taking on too many issues and 60 percent said he had to focus on so many things because the United States was facing so many problems.
While Republican criticism of the Democratic president's policies may be scoring points with voters, the strategy does not appear to be benefiting the party.
A CBS News/New York Times poll also released on Wednesday found the Republican Party viewed favorably by only 28 percent of Americans, the lowest rating ever in the poll. In contrast, 57 percent had a favorable view of the Democratic Party.
The CBS/New York Times poll also found a distinct difference in Obama's overall standing and how Americans viewed his major initiatives.
Obama's job approval rating held steady at 63 percent from the previous poll last month, but fewer than half of respondents approved of how he was handling healthcare reform and efforts to save GM and Chrysler, according to the survey.
The poll also found that Americans were alarmed by the amount of money doled out to boost the economy and a majority thought the government should focus instead on reducing the federal deficit.
Both polls also found a majority of Americans opposing Obama's decision to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey of 1,008 adults, conducted Friday to Monday, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
The CBS/New York Times telephone poll of 895 adults was conducted Friday through Tuesday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.
A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows President Obama's favorability ratings still sky-high but slipping slightly, while former vice president Dick Cheney, seen here during at recent appearance at the National Press Club, appears to be improving his image.Cheneymanual
Of those responding, 60% had a very or somewhat positive view of the president, compared to 66% in January, when Obama took office. Cheney's numbers moved up from 21% in December to 26% today. As our Gannett News Service colleague Chuck Raasch recently pointed out, the former veep has been on a full-court public relations press lately defending the foreign policy and national security efforts of his boss, former president George W. Bush.
The bipartisan team of pollsters who conducted the NBC/WSJ poll, Democrat Peter Hart and Republican Bill McInturff, found that while the president remains personally popular, the public has reservations about some of his policies, especially the administration's decision to take a stake in automaker General Motors.
i think despite the national media blackout on Obama criticism, people are starting to see through the double talk and realize this guy is in over his head.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 33% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -1. Today is the second straight day the President’s rating has been below zero (see trends).
Among those who are politically liberal, 64% Strongly Approve. So do 40% of moderates. However 61% of conservatives Strongly Disapprove (see other recent demographic highlights).
The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter.
Most voters still place the blame for our nation’s economic woes on the Bush Administration, but a growing number say it’s Obama’s economy now. The number blaming Bush has fallen to 54%. That’s down eight points from a month ago.
Consumer confidence, while still up since the beginning of the year, has retreated to its lowest level in two months. For the latest polling updates on other topics in the news, please visit the Rasmussen Reports home page.
Overall, 54% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance so far. Forty-five percent (45%) disapprove. For more Presidential barometers, see Obama By the Numbers.
Americans remain evenly divided as to whether or not health care reform should wait until the economy is better.
Most voters still place the blame for our nation’s economic woes on the Bush Administration, but a growing number say it’s Obama’s economy now. The number blaming Bush has fallen to 54%. That’s down eight points from a month ago.
Considering the poll, it was valid to bring that up. I reallize as a partisan you just want to focus on Obama but the economy didn't turn to shit while he was President. People can have short memories but not quite that short
One job of journalists is, to borrow a horse racing phrase, to "call the turns" of developing news. Yesterday, the White House press corps called the end of the Obama honeymoon.
By peppering the President with forceful questions on Iran and other big topics and by challenging some of his slippery answers, reporters captured the changing tone in the country. Like the end of a real honeymoon, blind infatuation is giving way to a more accurate view of reality.
The reality is that polls show rising doubt about President Obama's handling of the economy and wide disapproval about exploding deficits. The reality is that even many Democrats worry the White House health plan is messy and unaffordable. The reality is that ranks of independents who voted for him find Obama far more liberal than they expected.
It's also true that many news organizations have embarrassed themselves with fawning Obama coverage and are the subject of growing ridicule, including from Obama himself.
Those facts all probably played a role in the unprecedentedly aggressive tone of yesterday's news conference. More than anything else, Iran - where the President had been a timid fence-sitter while a democracy revolution was blooming, then being crushed by a thugocracy - galvanized the press to probe. Six of the 13 questions dealt with Iran.
"What took you so long?" was the most important one asked of the Obama presidency. It came from reporter Major Garrett of Fox News (where I am a contributor) and put an exclamation point on the President's failure to respond sooner with appropriate condemnation.
Obama finally found his voice yesterday, saying in his strongest language yet that the world was "appalled and outraged" at the violence against demonstrators. And in calling the video showing the death of Iranian icon Neda Soltan "heartbreaking," Obama succinctly expressed the world's emotion.
But in answering Garrett's question with nonsensical insistence he had been consistent, the President damaged his credibility and missed a chance to explain how his thinking has evolved since the June 12 election.
He blew another chance when a reporter asked whether criticism by Sen. John McCain and other Republicans had forced the tougher stance. "What do you think?" he said, getting defensive and saying, "Only I am the President of the United States."
It's a bad habit, a sign of weakness, to pull rank, yet this White House does it repeatedly. Obama brushed back calls for changes in stimulus spending by saying, "I won," and his press secretary said, "We won," just the other day to a question.
The notion that victory carries a blank check is fantasy. Especially in a polarized country with a nonstop media blitz, a mandate must be re-won on every major issue.
Obama knows as much, which is why he has been running a continuing campaign since the inauguration. Whether he's conducting town hall meetings in St. Louis or France or asking for prime-time coverage, Obama uses the bully pulpit and his charisma to aggressively push his agenda.
By and large, the approach has worked. Thanks to full Democratic control of Congress, Obama mostly gets his way, and his personal popularity has remained strong.
But his health plan could be in trouble over the cost and impact, and unemployment keeps rising beyond White House estimates, a fact the President conceded yesterday. He also conceded that stimulus spending has been slower than he wants, which I took as a jab at Vice President Biden's supposed management of the issue.
The result is that the public hasn't seen much economic gain and, combined with the growing debts and prohibitive costs of Obama's health and energy plans, voters are getting significantly more skeptical about the President. Iran added to the doubts.
The press corps gets it. For Obama, the hard part begins now.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 31% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-three percent (33%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That matches the lowest level yet recorded
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Saturday shows that 28% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-six percent (36%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –8 (see trends). Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Democrats now Strongly Approve of the President while 63% of Republicans Strongly Disapprove. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 43% Strongly Disapprove.
It’s been a tough week for President Obama’s cool factor.
Not only is he weathering criticism of his policies, but the Cool One has also taken a few dings to his immaculate image in recent days.
It started on Monday. Speaking at the White House, Obama was just getting into a sharp defense of his economic agenda when one of the teleprompter screens holding his speech crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces.
“Oh, goodness,” said a surprised Obama. “Sorry about that, guys.”
Needing a teleprompter is one thing. But having it crash to the ground mid-speech was, well, a long way from Obama’s on-camera fly-swatting for CNBC. Then, the chief of cool had men everywhere suddenly feeling insecure about their inferior ability to conquer insects.
On Monday, the president's audience snickered, while he didn’t crack a smile, and it took a few moments for him to adjust to reading his remarks without looking to his left, where there was now just an empty pole.
On Tuesday, Obama was put to another test: throwing out his first pitch as president. He had practiced with Reggie Love. He got advice from Willie Mays. But the pitch was a bit of a lob and while it didn’t hit the ground, it also didn’t clear the plate, like Obama had wanted. It was fine. But not the impressive performance some expected from the athletic president.
Even his hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune, said he was “lacking in style points on his short southpaw lob to home plate.”
Then there were the Dad Jeans – otherwise known as the Levis Obama sported when he threw out the pitch.
“Did Obama’s stylist come steal them from the closet of Frank Stransky?” a writer for Entertainment Weekly, Tanner Stransky, wrote in a blog post, apparently referring to his own father.
“I suppose President Obama is indeed a father, so we should allow him such a strike against humanity,” the blog continued. “And I guess he couldn't have come out in skin-tight baseball pants (or, rather, why not?) or the suit pants that he normally dons. But my, oh my. I wasn't ready to see him in such an ill-fitting pair of what look like 501s. I thought he was cooler than that, somehow. This humanizing of the President doesn't sit so well with me.”
And in one more embarrassing incident this week, Obama, a stickler for pronunciation, stumbled over the name of his surgeon general-designate's hometown – and had to ask Dr. Regina Benjamin for help pronouncing “Bayou La Batre.”
“Did I say that right?” Obama said. “Tell me how to say…” he said, turning to Benjamin for help, and then trying again: “Bayou La Batre. That’s in Alabama people.”
Gallup Poll Is Even Worse for Obama: pegs his approval rating at 55 percent -- ranking him 10th among the 12 post-World War II presidents at the same point in their first terms. Specifically, on health care, his approval is at 44 percent, and only 41 percent approve of his handling of the deficit.
With one word Monday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele helped the GOP get back in the fight over health care and the entire Obama agenda. The word was “experiment.”
“Candidate Obama promised change,” Steele said in a speech at the National Press Club. “President Obama is conducting an experiment.” Steele went on to accuse Barack Obama of carrying out dangerous experiments with the nation’s health care, with the economy, with taxpayers’ dollars.
“Experiment” didn’t come from nowhere. “The term bubbled up from a set of focus groups we did with swing voters, independents, soft Republicans and soft Democrats,” says one strategist involved in an extensive RNC research effort nationwide and in key states like Virginia, Colorado and Florida. “It’s something that a vast majority of voters believe is true, that Obama is running what amounts to an experiment with our future.”
The RNC researchers came away convinced that Americans are scared. Certainly voters expected Obama to do things. But they are frightened by the sheer scope of the president’s proposals, the fiscal dangers they present and, perhaps most of all, the astonishing speed with which the administration is trying to enact such fundamental and far-reaching changes.
“When Americans voted for change, it was for a change from the uncertainty and economic unpredictability at the end of the Bush years,” says Alex Castellanos, the Republican message master who helped shape the RNC campaign. “But the president is giving them economic unpredictability on steroids. There is the clear sense out there that he is moving so fast on so many fronts that his health care plan cannot be well thought out.”
You can see those feelings in the latest Washington Post poll in which just 49 percent of those surveyed approve of Obama’s handling of health care. The numbers were eagerly received by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. “This is a signature issue for him; it’s something he campaigned on, and it’s something that was inevitable in January,” says one key GOP Senate aide. “And now he has less than 50 percent approval on it and independents are running away.”
The more support peels away, the harder Obama pushes. Up until the weekend, he was demanding the House and Senate pass health care bills before the Aug. 7 recess. It was a schedule with no basis in reality, but only now — after Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of the moderates asking Obama to slow down, reminded him that it took Lyndon Johnson a year and a half to pass Medicare — has Obama backed away just a little.
But the public understands that he wants to rush, rush, rush, and voters told the RNC researchers that they were tired of the pressure. “Repeatedly,” the Republican strategist says, “we’d hear, ‘Wait a second. We had to do the stimulus in the dead of night, we had to do cap and trade without anybody reading the bill, we had to move quickly on a multitrillion-dollar budget without any serious public debate, and now we’ve got to get health care done in two weeks?’ ”
Republicans believe there’s a real chance Obama will make his own situation worse by pushing too hard. People have heard this sort of thing before. Anyone who’s bought a car, a TV or an insurance policy knows the feeling when a salesman amps up the pressure to close the deal. You need to buy this today, sign the papers right now, don’t wait another minute. When that happens, the smart customer backs off a little: Why is this guy trying to rush me into this? Behind all the focus groups and the message, that’s the simple version of what is happening now, with Obama in the role of the salesman and the American people as the smart customer.
For a long time, it looked as if Republicans were flattened and hopeless while Obama moved from victory to victory. But now, the sense of energy is palpable. The GOP critique of Obama is sharper, its discipline better, its fundraising up — all just seven months after the party got its clock cleaned in both the presidential and congressional elections.
The result of the Obama experiment might not be nationalized health care, but a re-energized Republican Party.
A new Zogby Interactive survey shows a slight decline in President Barack Obama's job approval, with 48% of likely voters now approving of the job he is doing as president, down from 51% who said the same in an interactive/telephone hybrid poll conducted in mid-June. Forty-nine percent now say they disapprove of the job the president has done so far in office and 4% are not sure.
The survey found similar results when likely voters were asked specifically to rate President Obama's performance-47% give him a positive rating, with 22% rating his job performance as "excellent" and 25% rating it as "good." But slightly more than half (53%) give the president a negative job performance rating, with 10% who say he is doing a "fair" job as president and 43% who say he is doing a "poor" job-up from 36% who said he was doing a poor job in mid-June.
Enthusiasm for President Obama's "subsidize everything, regulate everything" agenda is falling. Looks like Statism might not sell After All
President Obama's approval rating has dropped to 50 percent, according to a poll released Thursday, a new low for the president as he tries to shepherd health care reform legislation through Congress in the next few months.
A new Quinnipiac University poll shows 50 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing compared to 42 percent who don't.
That's the lowest number since Obama took office, and down from a 57 percent approval rating at the beginning of July.
A FOX News poll released July 23 showed his job performance at 54 percent.
The new Quinnipiac numbers suggest the public is losing confidence in the president's ability to guide domestic policy issues, yet retaining confidence in his ability to guide foreign policy.
Voters disapproved of the way he's handling health care by 52 percent to 39 percent, according to the poll. But they approved of the way he's handling foreign policy 52 to 38 percent.
Though his performance rating is down, the poll still showed Americans are more confident in his ability to handle the economy and health care than in the ability of Republicans in Congress.
The survey was taken July 27-Aug. 3 and based on interviews with 2,409 registered voters. It had a margin of error of 2 points.
A new CNN poll shows that more Americans consider the first six months of President Barack Obama’s administration worse than the same time period of his predecessor, former President George Bush.
When asked whether they thought the first six months of Obama’s tenure in office has been a success or a failure, 37 percent responding to the poll released Friday said they believe it was a failure. After Bush’s first six months in office, a similar CNN poll from August of 2001 showed only 32 percent considered it to be a failure.
Those who said the first half year of the Bush administration was a success polled at 57 percent in 2001, while Obama polled at 51 percent.
Other findings from the CNN poll show that 65 percent of Americans believe Obama has tried to handle more issues than he should have. Nearly 30 percent believe he has not handled enough of the issues, including the economy and healthcare.
More than 51 percent think Obama’s policies have made the economy worse, while 44 percent say he made the economy better.
Sorry, MEM. You live by the polls, you die by the polls.
Reporting from Washington - President Obama, who won the White House with an electoral college landslide and enjoyed soaring public approval in the weeks after his inauguration, has fallen to a 50% job approval rating in the newest daily tracking of the Gallup Poll released Thursday.
The new low for Obama compares with his peak public job approval rating of 69% after his inauguration in January.
The president's sliding approval ratings in the Gallup and other national polls this summer have paralleled growing unrest about his healthcare plans.
Polls also show that Obama has lost support for his handling of the economy, although his approval ratings for handling foreign affairs remain higher.
The loss of support for the president on domestic issues has made it more difficult for the White House to rally support in Congress for his healthcare initiative, with lawmakers looking at midterm elections a little over a year away.
Should the slide continue, Obama would by no means be the first president to drop below 50% in the Gallup Poll, which has been tracking public approval of presidents since Harry S. Truman.
But Obama has reached his new low more quickly than most of his predecessors did, Gallup said. The percentage of people voicing disapproval for Obama's job performance stands at a near-high of 43%.
Aides to the president said he was not fixated on polling data. Obama entered office with high ratings, White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton said Thursday, but never thought they were "something he should put up on a shelf and admire."
"It's real easy to stay popular in Washington if you don't do anything at all," said Burton, adding that the president doesn't believe in working that way.
Slipping below 50% before November of the first year in office would represent the third-fastest drop since World War II, Gallup reports.
President Ford slipped below 50% in his third month; President Clinton hit the mark in his fourth month. Ford's rating was partly spurred by his unpopular decision to pardon former President Nixon in 1974.
It took President Eisenhower five years to fall below 50%, Gallup said. It took Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush each about three years. It took Presidents Johnson and Nixon more than two years.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 32% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove. That's the highest level of Strong Disapproval yet recorded for this President and it gives Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -10.
Only 46 percent approve of the job Obama is doing -- a 19-point slide since he took over the White House from President Bush in January, according to a Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll released today.
The new poll numbers represent the lowest level of total approval yet measured for Obama.
Nowhere has that loss of confidence been as profound as it has been among highly valued independent voters.
Among those who are not part of either party, a whopping 66 percent disapprove of the job Obama is doing, according to the poll.
WASHINGTON -- What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?
The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chavista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?
But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama's behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can't get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.
In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one's own image.
Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.
Obama's reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob -- misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest -- from drug companies to auto unions to doctors -- in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged.
"Get out of the way" and "don't do a lot of talking," the great bipartisan scolded opponents whom he blamed for creating the "mess" from which he is merely trying to save us. If only they could see. So with boundless confidence in his own persuasiveness, Obama undertook a summer campaign to enlighten the masses by addressing substantive objections to his reforms.
Things got worse still. With answers so slippery and implausible and, well, fishy, he began jeopardizing the most fundamental asset of any new president -- trust. You can't say that the system is totally broken and in need of radical reconstruction, but nothing will change for you; that Medicare is bankrupting the country, but $500 billion in cuts will have no effect on care; that you will expand coverage while reducing deficits -- and not inspire incredulity and mistrust. When ordinary citizens understand they are being played for fools, they bristle.
After a disastrous summer -- mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing -- Obama is in trouble.
Let's be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He's not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.
But what has occurred -- irreversibly -- is this: He's become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He's regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.
For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform -- and his own standing -- with yet another prime-time speech.
But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises -- mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama's supreme self-regard may never adapt.
While all the attention has been paid to angry opponents of health care reform at Congressional town hall meetings, a bigger problem for President Obama and his party is brewing among Democrats.
Our latest Zogby Interactive poll of 4,518 likely voters (conducted from Aug. 28-31) found 48% disapprove of Obama's job performance, and 42% approve. The big story lies behind those top-line percentages.
In a similar interactive poll done six weeks ago, 88% of Democrats approved of Obama's job performance. That percentage is now down to 75%, a significant drop of 13 points. Meanwhile, there is only slight change among Republicans and Independents.
Obama has lost even more support among 18-29-year-old voters, whose approval fell by 18 points over that time. The Democrats may be able to count on older, die hard party members to come out and vote, even when they may be disappointed. But those young voters could very easily sour on the Democrats and politics itself if Obama does not deliver on his message of change.
Health care isn't the only issue that is hurting Obama with his Democratic base. The war in Afghanistan is losing popularity, and his handling of detainees and the bank bailout may not be what many Democrats voted for.
Last Friday's Gallup daily tracking poll showed that 51 percent of Americans approved of President Obama, and 42 percent disapproved.
Starting last weekend, he launched a full-scale media blitz, which included interviews with five Sunday talk shows and an appearance on David Letterman's show.
So how has all of this exposure worked out for him? Not too well, as it turns out. Today's Gallup has Obama at a 50 percent approval rating, with 42 percent disapproving. That actually is tied for the lowest Gallup approval rating of his presidency.
Sorry, Zick. You live by the polls, you die by the polls
This has to be frustrating for the One and his advisers. The gameplan from the primaries to now has been to just tell everyone his way is better. Now that people are asking questions he has hit a wall, and since he has never really had any other answers except to spend spend spend he's going down. They essentially have no ideas that don't involve spending.
Barack Obama might have hoped that an unexpected Nobel Peace Prize might halt his slide in the polls. Not so, says the latest Harris interactive poll, conducted over the last week. The survey contacted over 2200 adults on line, and his numbers dropped significantly from September’s poll, giving Obama an unfavorability rating of -10
Harris gives Obama one minor point of consolation — his numbers are better than that of Congress. That’s almost always the case anyway; George Bush at his lowest point in the polls scored better than Congress. However, the Harris poll found a peak approval rating for Congress in May of 31%. It has been cut almost in half since then to 16%.
Otherwise, though, the numbers look pretty bleak. The percentage of voters rating Obama “excellent” peaked in April at 18%, but has now dropped to 10%. “Pretty good” has come in for a softer landing, from 42% in May to 35% now. “Poor” has almost doubled from April’s 15% to October’s 28%, while “only fair” has remained constant over the last seven months at around the current 27%.
As the Harris summary mentions, the only age group Obama wins is the youngest (18-32), and only barely at 51%/49%, and only 10% of these think Obama has done an “excellent” job. He loses the other three age categories by wide margins, from 10 points to 22 points. Most troubling for Obama and Democrats as they close out their first year of single-party control of DC are the independents. Obama has a -20 favorability gap among unaffiliated voters, with only 6% rating him as “excellent” while 28% rate him “poor”.
Harris did not poll on individual issues as some other surveys do. However, given the timing of Obama’s decline in the Harris poll over the year, it suggests that Obama has seriously miscalculated on the overhaul of the American health-care system — and the longer that drags out, the worse he does.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – For the first time since he took over in the White House, Americans don't see eye to eye with President Barack Obama on the important issues, according to a new national poll. But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey does indicate that a majority approve of how Obama's handling his duties as president.
According to the poll, which was released Tuesday, 48 percent of people questioned say that they agree with Obama on the issues that matter most to them, with 51 percent saying no. That's a switch from April, when 57 percent said they agreed with the president on important issues, with 41 percent disagreeing.
"Obama is facing crunch time on a number of controversial issues, from health care to financial regulation to cap and trade to Afghanistan," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "The fact that most Americans no longer agree with him on important issues makes his task harder."
Fifty-five percent of those questioned say they approve of how Obama's handling his duties, with 43 percent disapproving. The 55 percent approval rating is down 3 points from September. Most recent national polls place the president's approval rating in the low to mid 50's.
"Obama continues to do poorly among senior citizens," says Holland. "Most Americans over the age of 65 disapprove of how he is handling his job as president."
The poll also suggests that two out of three Americans say Obama has the qualities a president should have, down 12 points from April - one indication the Nobel Peace Prize may not have helped him much in that regard.
Most Americans, 56 percent, don't approve of the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama, and only a third believe that Obama has done enough to deserve the prize.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted Sunday through Thursday, with 1,038 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Barack Obama has suffered the worst third quarter decline in his public approval rating of any elected president in the post-World War II era.
Obama's average quarterly approval rating has slipped from 62 percent in the second quarter to 52.9 percent in the third quarter, according to Gallup polling. That 9 percentage point decline is twice the amount of any other post-war elected president. No other elected president has declined more than 4 points since 1953. The third quarter began July 20 and ended October 19.
Harry Truman, who of course inherited the presidency from FDR, dropped 13 points between his second and third quarters in 1945 and 1946.
Significantly, Obama's plunge in the polls is notable but not new news. Obama suffered the bulk of his decline in late summer, though the media was slow to notice or note. Since summer, Obama has stabilized and generally bobbed slightly above the 50 percent mark. However, Gallup's latest tracking poll shows Obama right at 50 percent. That matches the lowest ranking of his still-young presidency. Rasmussen also tracks Obama near his previous floor.
Among all presidents since WWII, Obama's third quarter approval rating is above only Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford. Clinton averaged 48 percent in the third quarter of 1993. Ford averaged 39 percent during his 1975 third quarter.
More sobering for Obama, Gallup reports that Obama's latest quarterly average ranks 144th, or in the 44th percentile, for all post-war presidents during any quarter.
Not that it matters politically because obviously she's a female Republican dunce and he's a male Democrat genius.
But Sarah Palin's poll numbers are strengthening.
And Barack Obama's are sliding.
Guess what? They're about to meet in the 40's.
Depending, of course, on which recent set of numbers you peruse and how the questions are phrased, 307 days into his allotted 1,461 the 44th president's approval rating among Americans has slid to 49% or 48%, showing no popularity bounce from his many happy trips, foreign and domestic. Virginia line for Sarah Palin Going Rogue Book buyers
Riding the wave of immense publicity and symbiotic media interest over her new book, "Going Rogue," and the accompanying promotional tour, Palin's favorable ratings are now at 43%, according to ABC. That's up from 40% in July.
One poll even gives her a 47% favorable.
Most recent media attention has focussed on the 60% who say she's unqualified to become president. Her unfavorable rating is 52%, down from 53%, which still doesn't ignite a lot of optimism for Palin-lovers.
On the other hand, 35 months before the 2008 election, that Illinois state senator was such a nobody that no one even thought to ask such a question about him. Things seem to change much more quickly these days.
Saturday night Palin's book bus swung by a mall in Roanoke, Va., a state Obama won a year ago but just recently elected a Republican governor to replace departing Tim Kaine, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. The former Alaska governor wanted to greet the hundreds of fans already lining up in 39-degree weather for her Sunday morning signing.
"She brings out a different crowd, " Salem Republican Party Chairman Greg Habeeb told the Roanoke Times. Habeeb was struck by the numerous non-Republicans he spotted in the line snaking all over the mall. "She taps into something that the Republican Party really needs to tap into."
Sunday Palin flew ahead of her bus to visit the Rev. Billy Graham and his son Franklin at the father's North Carolina home before her appearance today at Fort Bragg.
Overall, Palin's, well, campaign will visit 25 states, most of them politically crucial. Florida gets the most stops, three.
Everybody thinks 2012 when they think of Palin, who last week pushed Oprah's show to.... ... its highest ratings in nearly three years. Remember, though, in 2012 the first hurdles a rehabbed candidate Palin would face are her own party's primaries, where diligent conservatives conscientiously come out to play. Sarah Palin Going Rogue Book Cover
If she somehow mobilized Iowa's white evangelicals as Mike Huckabee did to win the 2008 season-opening caucus, many bets would be off about her unelectability. Right now, Palin holds 65% approval among white evangelical Protestants, not a bad place to start, if she decides to.
That same ABC poll finds Palin's GOP approval right around 76%, 45% among independents and a surprisingly substantial 21% among Democrats. Among self-described liberals she's seen favorably by a slightly larger 22%, among moderates 38% and among conservatives 60%.
Anyway, Palin says 2012's not on her radar. Which is a good idea. The year 2010 is much more important for both of these political personalities.
No longer holding any office and personally set financially by the book's runaway success, Palin can devote her SarahPac and the entire year to collecting chits from local Republicans.
As Mitt Romney has already been quietly doing. Other Republicans will no doubt nominate themselves to join along the way, especially if Obama looks vulnerable after November 2010.
Although presidential incumbency has hardly kept Obama chained to the Oval Office, he and Joe Biden now own the U.S. economy, where their much-vaunted $787 billion economic stimulus package has so far stimulated unemployment to grow by a quarter from 8% to more than 10%. Democrat president Barack Obama walks alone on China's Great Wall on 11-18-09
And then there's the growing deficit dread and the mounting costs -- both human and financial -- in the increasingly unpopular Afghan conflict, where Obama is about to commit more U.S. troops at the end of the eighth and worst casualty year of the war.
We'll all hear much next year about how jobs are the last thing to improve in a sour economy, even in congressional districts that don't actually exist. Which is too bad for Democrats because jobs are the obvious first measure the public uses to measure the economy.
Historically, the White House party loses about 17 House seats in a normal midterm election cycle. That wouldn't change control of the House.
George W. Bush's GOP actually gained seats in 2002. Democrat Bill Clinton's first midterm election was a political Katrina, producing the Contract with America and so-called Republican Revolution that saw the GOP take control of both houses of Congress after years of minority status.
Much of that turnaround was attributed to Clinton having run in 1992 as a centrist and then immediately pushed a more liberal agenda involving something called healthcare reform.
But that couldn't possibly happen again because of the popularity of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi whose current favorable poll ratings are -- let's see here -- OMG, only about half of Palin's.
This week, two points in an emerging pointillist picture of a White House leaking support—not the support of voters, though polls there show steady decline, but in two core constituencies, Washington's Democratic-journalistic establishment, and what might still be called the foreign-policy establishment.
From journalist Elizabeth Drew, a veteran and often sympathetic chronicler of Democratic figures, a fiery denunciation of—and warning for—the White House. In a piece in Politico on the firing of White House counsel Greg Craig, Ms. Drew reports that while the president was in Asia last week, "a critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man." They once held "an unromantically high opinion of Obama," and were key to his rise, but now they are concluding that the president isn't "the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought."
She scored "the Chicago crowd," which she characterized as "a distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team." The White House, Ms. Drew says, needs adult supervision—"an older, wiser head, someone with a bit more detachment."
As I read Ms. Drew's piece, I was reminded of something I began noticing a few months ago in bipartisan crowds. I would ask Democrats how they thought the president was doing. In the past they would extol, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, his virtues. Increasingly, they would preface their answer with, "Well, I was for Hillary." This in turn reminded me of a surprising thing I observe among loyal Democrats in informal settings and conversations: No one loves Barack Obama. Half the American people say they support him, and Democrats are still with him. But there were Bill Clinton supporters who really loved him. George W. Bush had people who loved him. A lot of people loved Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. But no one seems to love Mr. Obama now; they're not dazzled and head over heels. That's gone away. He himself seems a fairly chilly customer; perhaps in turn he inspires chilly support. But presidents need that rock—bottom 20% who, no matter what's happening—war, unemployment—adore their guy, have complete faith in him, and insist that you love him, too.
They're the hard 20 a president always keeps. Nixon kept them! Obama probably has a hard 20 too, but whatever is keeping them close, it doesn't seem to be love. ***
Just as stinging as Elizabeth Drew on domestic matters was Leslie Gelb on Mr. Obama and foreign policy in the Daily Beast. Mr. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and fully plugged into the Democratic foreign-policy establishment, wrote this week that the president's Asia trip suggested "a disturbing amateurishness in managing America's power." The president's Afghanistan review has been "inexcusably clumsy," Mideast negotiations have been "fumbling." So unsuccessful was the trip that Mr. Gelb suggested Mr. Obama take responsibility for it "as President Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs."
He added that rather than bowing to emperors—Mr. Obama "seems to do this stuff spontaneously and inexplicably"—he should begin to bow to "the voices of experience" in Washington.
When longtime political observers start calling for wise men, a president is in trouble.
It also raises a distressing question: Who are the wise men and women now? Who are the Robert Lovetts, Chip Bohlens and Robert Strausses who can came in to help a president in trouble right his ship? America seems short of wise men, or short on those who are universally agreed to be wise. I suppose Vietnam was the end of that, but establishments exist for a reason, and it is hard for a great nation to function without the presence of a group of "the oldest and wisest" who can not only give sound advice but help engineer how that advice will be reported and received. ***
Mr Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The common wisdom that he can't afford to lose is exactly wrong—he can't afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind him, vow to fight another day, and move on. Afghanistan hangs over him, threatening the unity of his own Democratic congressional base. There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Obama's rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demand baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.
Which gets us back to the bow.
In a presidency, a picture or photograph becomes iconic only when it seems to express something people already think. When Gerald Ford was spoofed for being physically clumsy, it took off. The picture of Ford losing his footing and tumbling as he came down the steps of Air Force One became a symbol. There was a reason, and it wasn't that he was physically clumsy. He was not only coordinated but graceful. He'd been a football star at the University of Michigan and was offered contracts by the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers.
But the picture took off because it expressed the growing public view that Ford's policies were bumbling and stumbling. The picture was iconic of a growing political perception.
The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic, and they would not be if they weren't playing off a growing perception. If the pictures had been accompanied by headlines from Asia saying "Tough Talks Yield Big Progress" or "Obama Shows Muscle in China," the bowing pictures might be understood this way: "He Stoops to Conquer: Canny Obama shows elaborate deference while he subtly, toughly, quietly advances his nation's interests."
But that's not how the pictures were received or will be remembered.
It is true that Mr. Obama often seems not to have a firm grasp of—or respect for—protocol, of what has been done before and why, and of what divergence from the traditional might imply. And it is true that his political timing was unfortunate. When a great nation is feeling confident and strong, a surprising presidential bow might seem gracious. When it is feeling anxious, a bow will seem obsequious.
The Obama bowing pictures are becoming iconic not for those reasons, however, but because they express a growing political perception, and that is that there is something amateurish about this presidency, something too ad hoc and highly personalized about it, something . . . incompetent, at least in its first year.
It is hard to be president, and White Houses under pressure take refuge in thoughts that become mantras. When the previous White House came under mounting criticism from 2005 through '08, they comforted themselves by thinking, They criticized Lincoln, too. You could see their minds whirring: Lincoln was criticized, Lincoln was great, ergo we are great. But of course just because they say you're stupid doesn't mean you're Lincoln.
One senses the Obama people are doing the Lincoln too, and adding to it the consoling thought that this is only the first year, we've got three years to go, we can change perceptions, don't worry.
But they should worry. You can get tagged, typed and pegged your first year. Gerald Ford did, and Ronald Reagan too, more happily. The first year is when indelible impressions are made and iconic photos emerge.
President Obama's job approval rating has fallen to 47 percent in the latest Gallup poll, the lowest ever recorded for any president at this point in his term.
Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and even Richard Nixon all had higher approval ratings 10-and-a-half months into their presidencies. Obama's immediate predecessor, President George W. Bush, had an approval rating of 86 percent, or 39 points higher than Obama at this stage.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he doesn't "put a lot of stock" in the survey by Gallup, which has conducted presidential approval polls since 1938, longer than any other organization.
"If I was a heart patient and Gallup was my EKG, I'd visit my doctor," Gibbs said in response to questions from Fox. "I'm sure a six-year-old with a Crayon could do something not unlike that. I don't put a lot of stake in, never have, in the EKG that is daily Gallup trend. I don't pay a lot of attention to the meaninglessness of it."
It’s not unusual for politicians to react to polls. I’ve certainly seen it many times over the years, particularly when elected representatives or candidates are confronted with poll results they don’t like.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked Tuesday about Gallup Daily poll results showing a drop in President Obama’s job approval rating. According to news reports, Gibbs responded with some critical remarks and unusual analogies.
I’m certain Gibbs didn’t intend to impugn the value of presidential job approval polls in general. It appears he was reacting more to the fact that the president’s approval numbers are not stable, but, in fact, in a period of some change. More specifically, Gibbs was reacting to our report Monday highlighting the fact that, while there was a short-term positive uptick in Obama’s job approval ratings after his Afghanistan speech last week, his ratings through the weekend fell back.
But this type of movement is the nature of the beast. Gibbs said that if Gallup were his EKG, he would visit his doctor. Well, I think the doctor might ask him what’s going on in his life that would cause his EKG to be fluctuating so much. There is, in fact, a lot going on at the moment -- the healthcare bill, the jobs summit, the Copenhagen Climate Conference, and Afghanistan.
We live in a representative democracy. Our politicians are accountable to the people. Certainly the accountability that matters most is on Election Day. But keeping tabs on the people’s views of their elected representatives between elections is vitally important – and something in which the people of the country are demonstrably interested. We at Gallup are fortunate to have the capability to interview random samples of Americans on a daily basis. This helps us closely monitor the ways in which presidential actions are being received by the national constituency.
Of course, it's not just Gallup that finds this important. I’m sure the White House was just as interested as we were in how the president’s major speech at West Point last week played to the American public. Our tracking helped provide the answer.
Obama is set to travel to Oslo, Norway, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The White House is probably just as interested as we are in how the American public is going to react to this event. Our tracking will give us the answer -- both in the short-term and in the long-term. (And I’m sure the Obama campaign in 2008 paid a great deal of attention to their own tracking polls measuring how his candidacy was doing as the events of the campaign rocketed across the news each day.)
The foundation of the tracking poll is state-of-the-art, sound scientific sampling methodology, as is the same with all of our Gallup polling. Gallup reports presidential job approval using a three-day rolling average. Users are, of course, free to make whatever use they would like of the daily tracking information. The same pertains to their use of daily stock market reports, daily Nielsen ratings of television shows, or any other frequent measure.
how far has one sunk to be bitch slapped by poll nerds? I mmust say I'm impressed, the gallup dude has more guts(and brains) than 99% of the washington press corp.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18.
Confronted with their gloomy poll numbers, Democrats have decided the solution is to discredit the pollsters they blame for dragging down their standing with the public. Politico.com reports that the No. 1 target is the proprietor of Rasmussen Reports, source of widely reported polls tracking the declining popularity of President Obama and his legislative initiatives.
"Democrats are turning their fire on Scott Rasmussen, the prolific independent pollster whose surveys on elections, President Obama's popularity and a host of other issues are surfacing in the media with increasing frequency," reports Politico.com. Democratic pollster Mark Mellman complains that Mr. Rasmussen phrases polling "questions in a way that supports a conservative interpretation of the world." That's why Rasmussen's approval numbers for President Obama tend to be about five points lower than those of other pollsters, he says.
Mr. Rasmussen responds that any differences can be accounted for in large part because he screens for only those voters whom he determines are most likely to vote. This group, he says, is trending more conservative these days because they are highly motivated in opposition to Obama policies. Other firms poll adults without screening for likely voters, he told Politico, a procedure that's "always going to yield a better result for Democrats."
Most of us pay attention to polls because we want to know how upcoming elections are likely to play out and how the distribution of political power will change. On that score, Mr. Rasmussen seems to get solid results. FiveThirtyEight.com, a liberal Web site run by Nate Silver, found that Mr. Rasmussen had the third-highest mark for accuracy of any pollster in last year's elections. He predicted a six-point Obama victory; the final margin was seven points.
In 2009, Rasmussen did it again. His final survey in New Jersey had Republican Chris Christie beating Democrat Jon Corzine by three points, exactly the margin of Mr. Christie's victory. Says Mr. Silver: "Rasmussen's election polling has tended to be quite accurate in the past." He explains that "Rasmussen has a different model of what the 2010 election is going to look like, one which will feature a more conservative electorate. But that model isn't necessarily wrong, nor does it necessarily reflect bias."
Indeed, Mr. Rasmussen was in step with other pollsters charting the collapse of President Bush's approval rating. In November, 2008 it topped out at 62% disapproval in Rasmussen surveys, with a full 43% registering strong disapproval. Those numbers correctly anticipated the Democratic resurgence in that month's elections. Now that President Obama's numbers are trending downward, however, Democrats are lashing out rather than rethinking their policies. Democratic pollster Tom Jensen acknowledged as much to Politico, saying: "I don't think that what's happening with Rasmussen is unusual. It's just that sometimes when people are unhappy, sometimes you shoot the messenger."
That messenger is clearly becoming a force in politics, partly by polling more regularly and intensively than other companies such as Gallup. Pollster and blogger Mark Blumenthal says that in 2009 Rasmussen became the most searched-for polling firm on the Internet. It also apparently has become the No. 1 target for people who don't like its findings.
what is silly about the dems crying about this is if the polls are indeed hedged then people like the government takeover of their health. so who gives a fuck?
The poll indicates Americans are giving President Obama better marks on the handling of terrorism today than a few weeks ago. It was 45%-47% approval to disapproval before Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab’s failed Christmas Day terrorist attack; the January 8-10 poll indicated 49% approval compared to 46% disapproval. Either way, these are bad numbers for the president compared to May, when 55% of Americans registered approval of the president’s handling of terrorism.
What went wrong? A year ago, he was king of the world. Now President Obama's approval rating, according to CBS, has dropped to 46 percent — and his disapproval rating is the highest ever recorded by Gallup at the beginning of an (elected) president's second year.
A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his agenda, most particularly health-care reform. A year ago, Obama was the most charismatic politician on earth. Today the thrill is gone, the doubts growing....the reason for today's vast discontent, presaged by spontaneous national Tea Party opposition, is not that Obama is too cool or compliant but that he's too left.
It's not about style; it's about substance.
First energy, with cap-and-trade, an unprecedented federal intrusion into American industry and commerce. It got through the House, with its Democratic majority and Supreme Soviet-style rules. But it will never get out of the Senate.
Then, the keystone: a health-care revolution in which the federal government will regulate in crushing detail one-sixth of the U.S. economy. By essentially abolishing medical underwriting (actuarially based risk assessment) and replacing it with government fiat, Obamacare turns the health insurance companies into utilities, their every significant move dictated by government regulators. The public option was a sideshow. As many on the right have long been arguing, and as the more astute on the left (such as The New Yorker's James Surowiecki) understand, Obamacare is government health care by proxy, single-payer through a facade of nominally "private" insurers.
At first, health-care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own popularity. But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound unpopularity dragged him down with it. After 29 speeches and a fortune in squandered political capital, it still will not sell.
The health care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46 percent. But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the American people — disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized — have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.
Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.
He has 37% approval on health care and 58% disapproval.
And incredibly, despite this, Obama and the Democrat leadership want to ram through a final trillion-dollar healthcare bill in the next 2 weeks. Clearly against the will of the American people, an overwhelming majority of whom when polled oppose it.
If Obama's approval rate on the issue were over 50%, I still wouldn't like it, but I would have to accept that it was by some measure the will of the people. But this is clearly not what the people want, even with the best partisan sales-effort by the adoring pro-Obama media. And they're ramming it through anyway.
I'm very concerned this further adding of trillions to the debt (with cap-and-trade and amnesty-for-illegals next on the agenda) will collapse the dollar before Obama can be ejected from office.
How do we stop a government that has no compliance to the will of the people, not even compliance to those who elected Obama?
And what extremes to prevent Obama's extremism would be unjustified?
The labour government that has been in power over here in the UK for almost 13 years were still blaming the last party in power(conservatives) for all their own shortcomings up until recently!
They came into power with all the pomp Barry did and they have been massive failures!
Yeah, it's one thing to run on "change." It's another thing to point out where your predecessor made mistakes and why you suggest people not return to those policies.
It's quite another to blame everything on your predecessor.
When he was sworn in, President Obama enjoyed an approval rating of 68 percent, according to Gallup, compared with a disapproval rating of merely 12 percent.
But instead of uniting the country, Obama decided to use the economic crisis as an opportunity to push as many liberal initiatives as he could. He signed a $787 billion economic stimulus package that failed to keep unemployment under 10 percent, and attempted to ram through an overwhelmingly unpopular health care bill. In the end, the process descended into a series of backroom deals with the same special interest groups he pledged to fight, and hidden from the view of C-SPAN cameras he promised to let in the room.
Taken together, these actions alienated independent voters, who supported Obama because they thought he would govern as a moderate and change the cynical ways of Washington.
As of this writing, Obama's Gallup approval rating has dropped to 50 percent, while his disapproval has surged to 43 percent. Thus, on a net basis, Obama's rating has dropped 49 points in a year. And if that isn't enough, just yesterday, a Republican was elected to fill the seat once held by Ted Kennedy in a state that voted for Obama over Sen. John McCain by 26 points.
So in a sense, the midterms came early for Obama. On the one-year anniversary of his presidency, he'll have to decide whether he'll continue on his current course, which will cause further erosion of support among independents and subject his party to further losses. Or, like President Clinton, decide to scale back his liberal agenda and attempt to govern as the moderate many Americans though they were electing.
On the first anniversary of his inauguration, the President is dealing with the fallout from a stunning election upset in Massachusetts last night. On his way to victory, Scott Brown won unaffiliated voters by a 73% to 25% margin. That is consistent with a weakness among unaffiliated voters that has been evident in the President’s numbers for several months. Currently, just 25% of unaffiliated voters Strongly Approve of the President’s performance while 44% Strongly Disapprove.
It was independents who won the election for obama in Nov 2008. Now that they vitriolically oppose Obama's spending plans for Obamacare, cap-and-trade, stimulus bills, Omnibus, and other assorted bribes and backroom vote-buying deals, the more moderate Democrats will back off supporting any of this controversial Obama legislation, and it has all died a quick death with Sen.Brown's election in Massachusetts.
The people have spoken. And like it or not, the Democrats will now listen, or suffer even worse defeats.
Barack Obama's job approval remains mired below 50% in Gallup's latest daily tracking poll. Worse for the Big O, for the first time as many people surveyed dis-approve of the job Obama's doing as approve it; approval and disapproval both stood at 47%. Worse still, these numbers come after a major PR effort by Obama following his State of the Union, with Obama's disapproval spiking 2% in the last 24 hours.. And these numbers come from Gallup. Polling changes over time, of course. But people apparently aren't buying what Obama's selling.
A new Marist poll shows President Obama's disapproval rating (47 percent) exceeding his approval rating (44 percent). Among independents, just 29 percent approve of the president's job performance, while 57 percent disapprove.
Perhaps worse for the president is the number of respondents that report being disappointed by the politics of hope. 47 percent of those surveyed say President Obama has "fallen below their expectations," while just 7 percent say he has exceeded them.
[In addition] A new Gallup poll shows dismal approval numbers for President Obama on health-care policy, the budget deficit, and the economy
Jason E. Perkins annoyed Moderator Your death will make me king! 15000+ posts 1 minute 14 seconds ago Reading a post Forum: Politics and Current Events Thread: Obama's Approval Rating Crashes Violently
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Jason E. Perkins annoyed Moderator Your death will make me king! 15000+ posts 19 minutes 28 seconds ago Reading a post Forum: Politics and Current Events Thread: Obama's Approval Rating Crashes Violently
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Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday: 25% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-two percent (42%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -17
Meanwhile, another poll today says "Democrats Losing Middle America":
It's really looking like a brutal year for Democrats in the Big Ten states.
Barack Obama's approval numbers in the two places we polled this week- Wisconsin and Ohio- tell the story. He won Wisconsin by 14 points in 2008 but we find his approval there at a net -2 (46/48) for a 16 point drop since the election. It's a similar story in Ohio. He won there by four points in 2008 but our approval numbers there for him tomorrow will show him at -13 (40/53) for a drop of 17 points. If his national approval rating was falling the way it is in these two states he'd be at about 43/53 for the whole country.
If the election was today Democrats would likely lose something they currently hold in every state where they have something to lose- Pennsylvania Governor and perhaps Senate, Michigan Governor, Ohio Governor, Indiana Senate, Iowa Governor, Wisconsin Governor and perhaps Senate, and Illinois Senate and/or Governor. Only Minnesota doesn't join the party because Democrats have nothing to lose there.
What all this really makes me wonder is just how many House seats Democrats are going to lose in the region this year. The smattering of polling we've seen has not been very good for the party, but because it's so limited it's hard to get a handle on just how bad the situation is. Given the Obama numbers and what we're seeing in Senate and Gubernatorial polls though I'm guessing it's not a good picture for Democrats. It's going to be a very difficult year for the party in this region.
I've said it before, I'll say it again. You can't cherry pick the polls, MEM.
USA Today/Gallup Poll: nearly two in three Americans say health-care reform costs too much, expands government too far, and will worsen deficits, while a plurality believe it will increase premiums and reduce coverage. Meanwhile, 50 percent of respondents said Obama doesn’t deserve to be re-elected, an 26 percent say he deserves “a great deal of blame” for the nations economic problems – double the number who said as much last summer.
Originally Posted By: the G-man
I've said it before, I'll say it again. You can't cherry pick the polls, MEM.
Poll: Obama Gets Bad Grades. President's legislative victory with new health care law did not help his job approval rating, which hit a new low at 43 percent among voters
Originally Posted By: the G-man
I've said it before, I'll say it again. You can't cherry pick the polls, MEM.
Voters have lost faith in Obama to craft solutions to the country's economic challenges. Just 39% say they trust Obama more than GOPers in Congress, while 32% say they believe the GOP has the right ideas. That 7-point gap is down from a 29-point Obama advantage in the April '09 poll.
Only 39% of voters said they would vote to re-elect Pres. Obama if the election were held today, while 50% say they would vote for someone else. A quarter of voters would definitely vote to re-elect Obama, while 37% would definitely vote for someone else.
MEM, we all know how interested you are in posting polls about Obama. I think you missed this one.
The latest Gallup Poll is out and it's bad news for the Democrats. People favor the GOP for Congress 49% to 43%, and Republicans are a lot more enthusiastic about voting.
It's still a long-time to November, but public attitudes on spending and health appear to be solidifying against the Democrats.
I can't wait for 2012. I really hope we put up a good candidate against Glorious Leader Piece of Shit Obama but I have a feeling whoever runs will win easily.
Whenever I'm around my liberal friends or family I just say "I hate Sarah Palin because MSNBC told me to". Some of them get the joke, the others just start bashing her for not being a dyke liberal.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 24% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-four percent (44%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -20 (see trends).
Just 29% believe the president’s economic stimulus package has helped the economy while 43% believe it has hurt. Voters say that decisions made by business owners following their own self-interest will create more jobs than decisions made by government officials.
Consumer and investor confidence are both down slightly since the beginning of 2010 and down sharply since early May. The Rasmussen Employment Index slipped a point this month.
“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”
Watch it, G-Man. We are supposed to show solidarity with the people of the Gulf by vacationing there. The leader's wife said so. God, first there were 57 states and now the guy and his family think Maine is in the Gulf of Mexico.
Crap. She really said that? And now they're vacationing in Maine?
I really couldn't figure out why anyone would bitch about Obama not vacationing at the Gulf but if the First Lady really said that I'm surprised people aren't being even more critical...
On her first trip to the Gulf Coast since the BP oil spill, First Lady Michelle Obama encouraged Americans to consider vacationing on the region’s beaches that have not been directly impacted by oil.
“It is vacation time. Folks are looking for things to do with their kids, and this would be a great opportunity to do a few things -- help this community, send a different message about the extent of the spill, and also think long term about how the rest of the country can help this economy and the folks down here,” Mrs. Obama said at the Panama City Welcome Center.
The Obama family will be taking a mini-vacation of their own this weekend, but instead of going to the Gulf Coast they are traveling to Maine’s Mount Desert Island, home of Acadia National Park.
Mrs. Obama said the word needs to get out to Americans that there are “beautiful beaches” along the Gulf Coast and it’s a great time for families to come down with their kids.
“There are still thousands of miles of beaches that have not been touched by the spill,” the first lady said. “And there are communities that thrive on tourism and on the economic power of beaches that have not been damaged.”
Gayle Oberst, mayor of Panama City Beach, said that the oil spill is “destroying a way of life” as tourists change their vacation plans.
“The beach has always been the most beautiful beach,” Oberst told ABC News, “And if we don’t have that beach to sell here, we are going to have to find other things to sell to them.”
Echoing other officials from the Obama White House, including the president, Mrs. Obama called the spill “the worst environmental disaster that our nation has seen.”
Mrs. Obama said that her husband’s administration is “doing our best” to rectify the situation in the region and take this opportunity to “really build and preserve and make the Gulf the prize of this country that it has been and should continue to be.”
How low can President Obama's approval rating go? Pretty low, it appears. The president's approval rating reached a new all-time low, according to a national Quinnipiac survey released today
There's still plenty of time for Obama to turn this around so this poll doesn't mean a lot for his re-election chances.
At the same time, assuming there are not as valid (or more valid) polls out there, one has to wonder when the president is going to realize that his polices do not resonate with the majority of Americans. Or are the conspiracy theorists correct and Obama is more concerned with a fundamental transformation of American into a socialist nation then re-election?
“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”
Wow. If I was more the paranoid type...
The Democrats have habitually launched some kind of political sabotage attempting to rig every election since 2000.
To launch the kind of sabotage that they accused Bush of in the 9-11 attacks wouldn't be a stretch at all.
Bush job approval rating higher than Obama's: George W. Bush’s job approval rating as president has spiked to 47 percent, according to a Gallup poll released Monday. That’s 1 point higher than President Barack Obama’s job approval rating in a poll taken the same week.
JFK 85% Reagan 74% Clinton 69% Bush Sr 64% Ford 61% Carter 52% Johnson 49% George W. Bush 47% Nixon 29%
I was surprised at the tendency for past presidents to have their numbers improve over the years after they left office.
Obama's popularity has been hovering at around 46% since the mid-term elections. I'm frankly amazed to see his numbers remain that high. Although I've seen Obama poll lower in other surveys.
That would coincide with the growing uneasiness of the public over the Stimulus bill, Omnibus bill, his first 1.6 trillion deficit budget, and apparently the public reached its limit with Obama when Obamacare was rammed through, with well over 50% of the public opposing it.
Especially after billion-dollar perks were given to Landrieu and Ben Nelson and Bill Nelson to purchase their votes, as well as exemptions for certain corporations and unions favoring Obama.
