Poll: Obama's disaster management gets solid marks

Updated 9:30 a.m. ET

CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto.

The U.S. and other countries began cruise missile and air strikes in Libya on Saturday -- an effort to protect civilians from attacks by the country's long-time ruler Muammar Qaddafi.

A CBS News survey shows that exactly half of Americans approve of how President Obama is handling the situation in Libya, and just 29 percent disapprove. Twenty-one percent said they did not have an opinion.

President Obama receives more support from Republicans on this issue than he has on domestic issues such as the economy and the deficit. Forty-three percent of Republicans say they approve of how the President is handling the crisis in Libya, and 41 percent disapprove. A majority 66 percent of Mr. Obama's Democratic voters said they approved, along with 43 percent of independents.

On another pressing international issue - the U.S. response to the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan - President Obama receives a much higher approval rating.

More than seven in 10 Americans (73 percent) say they approve of the President's handling of the U.S. response to the triple disaster, and just 14 percent expressed disapproval.

Such high marks are not unprecedented; Both President Obama and his predecessor received similarly high approval ratings for their handling of other natural disasters overseas.

In January 2005, 81 percent said they approved of President George W. Bush's handling of the tsunami in South Asia, and in January 2010, 80 percent said the same of how President Obama was handling the U.S. response to the earthquake in Haiti.

More from this poll: Most Americans no more fearful of nuclear power

The president's overall job approval rating now stands at 49 percent, with 41 disapproval, similar to evaluations of him last month. The percentage that approves has hovered in the mid to high 40s for the past year.

As they have been, views of Mr. Obama are polarized by partisanship - 78 percent of Democrats approve of the job he is doing, but that drops to 18 percent among Republicans. Independents are more closely divided - 46 percent approve, and 39 percent disapprove.

Read the complete poll

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This poll was conducted by telephone on March 18-21, 2011 among 1,022 adults nationwide. Phone numbers were dialed from samples of both standard land-line and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher. This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.

[noloyalisti]

Well after the brain dead, war criminal, corporate slave, completely incompetent Bushoccio, of course Obama is better.

[34sender]

Of course if the pole, or pool or even the opinion POLL says something positive about Obama, it must have been done wrong, wrong, wrong.

Ahhhh, the anti-Obama people get so mad when the real facts contradict the ones they have to believe in order to wake up and start the accusations and falsehoods flowing.

In reality, this poll is right in line with the average (with, who'd have guessed... Rasmussen being the outlier) -- Real Clear Politics has the average at 47.8 approve to 46.2 disapprove.

Even Fox News has the approval at 49 with a disapproval of 44 -- almost exactly like this CBS poll.

[Nmmrng]

Look! The guy sucks! He hasn't done a thing to help this country! And now he has involved us in someone else's civil war.

[trimrider]

No on This going to believe this pool was not done asking only Liberal Democrats. Obama has not had any leadership at all on any issue. So again enough with the fake pools trying to bolster a incompetent president.

[lb2341]

Who does CBS poll? I don't know anyone of any political party that thinks Obama and administration are doing even a "satisfactory" job in any area.

[jimbom121]

Perhaps you need to get out more.

[chillycat]

Would love to know the group of brain dead (or perhaps as likely obowma/dem voters actually dead)that CBS keeps on call for these so called polls of theirs that they put out everytime they KNOW obowma is showing how truly stupid and over his head he actually is....

[jimbom121]

I guess the same as all of the other polls, they are very consistent.

[34sender]

They are so good at knowing ahead of time, who will answer RANDOM phone calls... maybe we should accept that liberals and the liberal media is really just so much better at everything than conservatives.

[noloyalisti]

It helps when you have a commander who actually has a brain and is willing to use it to help others. As opposed to ANY Republican or conservative.

[bradkt1]

That bit of news...the approval of the American people of President Obama's crisis management skills...ought to be enough to upset the lying right wing for the day.

[starleo146]

The Republicans are working hard to destroy Obama, but he will prove them wrong once again. All I heard from them before the election was Obama needs to concentrate on jobs, now that the public voted the Republicans in they want to repeal health care, bring a close to the unions, obortion rights and get to turn Roe vs. Wade around,same sex marriage is going to stop things like that and cut spending. I believe in cutting spending where needed. I also believe in Investment in this country which provides jobs in the end. These idiots in Congress now will destroy this country as it never has been before.Before the President committed to Libya all I heard from the media is when is he going to do something? Why doesn't he say something ? If the media knows so durn much they should run for president and solve all our problems. Now he got the Allies to go in all I hear another war. Kadaffi is a tyrant and killed and killed. Those Americans on the plane. He deserves everything he is getting and then some. America will never win another war just because of the politics in this country and the religious right in this country..

[bacaangel]

"Gandhi said flatly that if a madman is raging through a village with a sword (read: assault rifle - or Glock Automatic) he who "dispatches the lunatic" will have done the community (and even the poor lunatic) a favor.

Open warfare has already broken out: the scale and stage of the violence are extreme. Yet there is still a way to respond that, while extremely difficult to pull off, could be called nonviolent. We in the nonviolence field will recognize this as a "madman with a sword" analogy. Gandhi said flatly that if a madman is raging through a village with a sword (read: assault rifle - or Glock Automatic) he who "dispatches the lunatic" will have done the community (and even the poor lunatic) a favor. Here are Gandhi's exact words, from The Hindu, 1926:

Taking life may be a duty&. Suppose a man runs amok and goes furiously about, sword in hand, and killing anyone that comes in his way, and no one dares capture him alive. Anyone who dispatches this lunatic will earn the gratitude of the community and be regarded as a benevolent man.

From other sources, however, we see that to use lethal force without actually being violent is extremely tricky. Remember always, by the way, that we are talking about an extreme emergency. One cannot prepare to use lethal force against such a situation because if one has time to prepare one can prepare nonviolence. Arming airline pilots in case there are hijackers does not count. That understood, several other conditions must be met:

One must act as far as possible without anger or fear. One must harbor no hatred of the deranged party. Even lunatics are people.

One must not complain if one is injured in the process. Life will not always appear fair to our limited vision.

And by far the most important condition: One must not feel that s/he has solved the problem once the maddened person is successfully stopped and innocents protected. Instead, one must dedicate some serious time and effort, to asking how we have created a world where this can happen - and how to change it.


This last, crucial point brings us squarely to the second question. As things are, we have very few options that are not military. Conceivably, the Arab League or some other trusted party could offer to mediate; if the tension were to somehow subside a superb mediation agency like TRANSCEND could also be used. But hatreds are so high now that neither side is likely to call in such a resource. If, or to the extent that, one could intervene with force in the spirit described above and, for example, impose a ceasefire, it could be considered a nonviolent act. Remember that the literal meaning of ahi?s? (nonviolence) is actually "the absence of the desire to injure." In other words, if one really acts to protect and not to punish, one is being nonviolent even while using coercive force. But how many of our military personnel are trained not to hate and dehumanize their intended victims? Alas, their training is precisely the reverse. It's as bad as the "training" young people get from video games - but that must be the subject of another article."

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/libya-acid-test-for-nonviolence

[Zann-Zel]

Something else is going on and we have absolutely no idea what it is?
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LOL! Some of these statements actually make me laugh!
If we don't know what it is....how do we know something else is going on?

[Reality-Checker]

I have to give Obama credit for one thing....he permits good ideas to prevail even when he doesn't agree with them, which speaks on his behalf.

I know the principal concern on his mind is the economic recovery and he doesn't want to take his eye off the ball in Afghanistan. Those are two of his key points from his campaign that got him elected.