Obama readies jobs speech amid dismal ratings

President Obama.

/ AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

As President Obama gears up to deliver a major jobs speech before Congress on Thursday, a handful of new polls give the president some of his most dismal approval ratings to date - adding renewed pressure for the White House to drive home a message on jobs and the economy that resonates with the American people.

According to two new surveys by ABC News/Washington Post and NBC/Wall Street Journal, Mr. Obama's approval ratings are at a record low in his presidency, at just 43 percent and 44 percent respectively. And a POLITICO/George Washington University Battleground Poll released Monday night found that just 45 percent of voters approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president.

Moreover, the president has scored particularly low marks across the board when it comes to his leadership on economic issues: 62 percent of those surveyed in the ABC/Washington Post poll said they disapproved of how Mr. Obama was handling the economy; 59 percent of those surveyed in the Politico/GWU battleground poll said the same, and according to the NBC/WSJ poll, approval of his economic stewardship is at a low of 37 percent.

The surveys come on the heels of last week's bleak jobs report, which indicated that no new jobs were added in August and that the unemployment rate remained steady at 9.1 percent.

Meanwhile, Congress returned to Washington this week after its annual August recess - and a recent skirmish between the White House and the House speaker's office over the timing of Mr. Obama's speech seems to suggest that partisan hostility will continue unabated in the coming congressional session.

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All three polls suggest that voters believe strongly America is headed down the wrong road.

According to the POLITICO/GWU poll, 72 percent of voters said the country was either strongly or somewhat on the wrong track - as compared to just 19 percent who felt the country was headed either strongly or somewhat in the right direction. Nineteen percent of those surveyed by NBC/WSJ said they believed America was headed in the right direction, and 20 percent of Americans polled by ABC/Washington Post said the same thing.

And while Mr. Obama generally outranks his congressional Republican counterparts in favorability - who according to the ABC/Washington Post poll have just 28 percent approval among respondents - his lead over GOP presidential candidates has become almost negligible.

The NBC/WSJ poll puts the president just one point ahead of former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, at 46 percent to 45 percent (notably, his lead over Romney has dropped five points since June), and five points in front of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whom he led 47 percent to 42 percent. Plus, for the first time in NBC/WSJ's polling of the president, voters responded more positively to a theoretical Republican candidate than to Mr. Obama: 44 percent of respondents said they would likely vote for a generic GOP candidate for president in 2012, as opposed to just 40 percent who said they would likely vote for Mr. Obama.

"Obama is no longer the favorite to win re-election," Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted the NBC/WSJ poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff, proclaimed.

Nevertheless, both the NBC/WSJ polls and the Politico/GWU poll suggest that no matter the public's view of Mr. Obama's job performance, the vast majority still like him "as a person." According to Politico/GWU findings, 74 percent of respondents approved of him strongly or very strongly as a person, as opposed to just 18 percent who said the opposite. The NBC/WSJ poll finds that a combined 70 percent of voters still find him likeable.

Either way, the surveys show that Mr. Obama has a lot of ground to make up if he wants to regain the support that helped him win the presidency in 2008. According to the ABC/Washington Post poll, the president earns only 47 percent support among voters between the ages of 18 and 29 - a demographic that proved crucial for the president in 2008.

[prohb]

The Republican messaging machine has succeeded:

After 3 years of unrelenting attacks on Obama.
After 3 years of stalling, delaying and dening anything he wanted to do even if it would do something good for America.
After 3 years of (admittingly) wickedly brilliantly campaign of switching the blame to Obama after they messed up our economy.
After 3 years of painting him as weak, not a leader and refusing to accept or allow anything that would give the perception of him as a leader.
After 3 years of fanning the flames of Fear and Hate so the American public became anxious, confused and un-resilient and looked for simple answers.
After 3 years of ranting and screaming the loudest, it has fooled many Americans.
As Josef Goebbles, Nazi propagandist said - If you tell Lies big enough,loud enough, and often enough to fearful people they will follow you.
That's what the Republican machine, Tea Party manipulators, Fox Noise, Conservative Talk Radio, and rich conservative CEO's like the Koch brothers have done. No wonder Obama can't get much done - when you have people that are only into POWER.
God, or someone, help our country if one of the Republican candidates get's the Presidency.

[tsigili]

Is anyone going to bother watching? We all KNOW it is just going to be more totally wasteful, squanderous spending, that will do no more than give modest TEMPORARY relief, while wasting 300 billion dollars.

[fedupanddisgusted]

To be Fair - No one man can energize the economy by himself - what is congress doing in this area? That said - It should be apparent to all that our President is just another empty suit with a ability to BS some of the people some of the time. If this country can't come up with a alternative then - shame on us!

[spike54321]

I plan on watching the Packer game. I can't stand to hear another word out of his lying mouth. His NLRB blocking jobs at Boeing in South Carolina, His DoJ telling Gibson guitars that they will back off if they offshore their jobs to Madagascar, his proclamation that illegals can now get work permits here in the US. etc etc. His actions are all against Americans and the unemployed. He has done nothing and will do nothing to benefit Americans. As I have said before, pay no attention to what he says. Watch what he does, and so far it's all anti American.

[RobAla]

Like they say "Money (or a job) talks, and BS walks. I plan to listen to President Obama, but I am very tired of hearing his failed policies. No more massive bogus stimulus and bailouts that we can not afford. Get the federal boot off the neck of private sector business, so that jobs can be created naturally.

[myIife2live]

How long does it take Obama to "ready" his speech when all he is going to say is "Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto".

[wfw3536]

When Obama took office there was so much hope for a different politican, but it is clear he is just more of same. What is really sad he has surrounded himself with economic folks with little experience in the private business sector. The job is just too big for Obama.

[aldrich617]

I follow the dialogue on economic issues fairly closely these
days and I would like to mention a good-looking, do-able, obvious, and possibly significant stimulus idea that I have not seen
mentioned in decades (mass amnesia?). People with substantial
savings are reluctant to spend in this threatening economic environment because the powers that be have decreed that they will no longer get any risk-free return on their money. In the good old days you could get a decent return just by putting some cash in the bank and forgetting about it. Its reliability increased demand significantly because people could buy thousands worth of goods and at the end of the year their nest egg might actually be bigger than it was a year earlier.

I propose that Banks Be Required to have Special Savings Accounts
for individuals with a guaranteed 4% interest rate for amounts under $100,000. A family of ten with a million bucks saved could
spend $40000 a year (and many would) with no decrease in principal.
Obama and/or his Republican detractors would be wise to heed this clarion call for common sense.

[realtimecoffee]

A family of ten? There is your problem, not savings rates.

[casestudies]

I have an idea that could really help the jobs problem. Implementing this idea would greatly enhance employers' ability to find qualified engineering talent, and help the U.S. economy in general. Both the Republicans and Democrats are under a lot of pressure to do something for private industry job growth, and this would almost certainly help do that.

My idea essentially is to create one of the conditions that exist in the American software industry: ease of market entry and innovation. Having low barriers to entry has worked reasonably well for the US in software. I'm guessing that it would also work well for small scale manufacturing.

My idea would reduce barriers to innovation and quality for American companies.

We need a national program that walks mechanical and manufacturing engineering university graduates through design and manufacturing case studies, with hands-on experience with a variety of manufacturing processes.

I wish I could have participated in such a program when I graduated college. My mechanical engineering university education was much too theoretical. Frankly, my ability to do real-world design engineering is limited by that.

Undergraduate engineering degrees are professional degrees in reality, if not officially. Other professional schools (e.g. law, business) use case studies, but engineers are expected to function without the benefit of a similar collection of experience. This must change.

Unlike software engineering university programs, mechanical engineering curricula typically offer inadequate chances for hands-on learning. I'm guessing that's due to the cost of equipment, energy, materials, and liability insurance. Sure, sometimes a student can land an internship at a company, but that's not nearly enough.

There is a TV show on the Discovery Channel called How It's Made. If you've seen it, imagine actually visiting the factories they show, instead of watching it on TV. Imagine being coached and doing each step of the process, single-handedly manufacturing the product as much as possible. That's basically what I'm looking for, for the manufacturing part of the training anyway. A discussion of the history and evolution of that process would be a really helpful addition, to understand why the process is set up the way it is.

It seems unlikely that private enterprise factory owners would permit students to actually handle their equipment. They sometimes will allow factory tours, but that's not enough. Also, I suspect that few, if any, universities could afford to maintain their own set of factories. If I'm right, then this makes it very difficult for people to get the broad experience that would make them highly effective innovators.

We need one separate educational organization, funded by the U.S. government. That organization should purchase appropriate factories or equipment, and move them to suitable locations. It then would take American graduates and students from any U.S. university, and let students visit the factories that interest them. Each student would be trained to do each step of the manufacturing process.

Beyond that, the ideal institution I'm envisioning would also have physical specimens of various devices or parts, some being exceptionally well designed and some having flawed design. Each item would be accompanied by discussion of its history and the decisions that led to the design.

Likewise, describing examples of exceptionally good and bad manufacturing processes would be very enlightening.

Where applicable, students should also see examples of finished products that are very easy to maintain, as well as some that are difficult to maintain.

I don't believe anything like this exists. I've been searching, and I haven't found anything remotely like it.

I already emailed this idea to my Congressman (Brian Bilbray) with no response. I also emailed American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Society of Women Engineers; they replied, but they had no ideas for how to proceed.

I have no idea about how to really get the attention of the right people in government. I've already tried, without success.

[Martha12345]

Will the speech be broadcast from Comedy Central ?