The Irony Behind Obama's Poll Numbers

By: Charles Cooper
Topics: In The News

(CBS)

In a numbers-driven society, nuanced reflections about presidential job approval will only go so far. In the end, it always comes down to the final numbers - and the newest poll numbers about Barack Obama are not good.

Mr. Obama's approval rating is now 46%, the first time it has fallen below 50% since he became president one year ago, according to the latest CBS News poll.) For an administration that swept into Washington with high hopes - don't they all? - the results are a rebuke to a political leader who championed the slogan, "change we need." The irony is that President Obama's job approval ratings have suffered even as he has tried to push through an ambitious agenda in Congress to force the very change he promised. If you interpret the numbers as an interim report card, this isn't one to trumpet.

Let's put in another way: The public is handing out the lowest grades of Mr. Obama's presidency for the way he's handled his his two biggest policy challenges - the economy and health care reform.

Only 41% of the public still says that it approves of the way the president is handling the economy. Meanwhile, 82% describe the economy as being in bad condition. What's more, just 36% support the way he has handled health care reform while 54% disapprove.

The one consolation for Mr. Obama: 31% of the public thinks the economy is getter better, compared to 5% who thought things were improving last February.

With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, the plunge in Mr. Obama's approval ratings now seems as if it were preordained. Unlike most other first-year presidents, Mr. Obama assumed office with the economy in its worst trough since the 1930s Depression. He quickly spent much of his political capital moving on an ambitious domestic agenda, but just as quickly ran into a wall of opposition over the $787 billion stimulus bill. The GOP dunned the new administration for being profligate and warned that the president was saddling future generations with trillions of dollars in debts. Mr. Obama's economic team argued that the government had little choice but to move dramatically to help kick-start the nation's economic engine and fill the vacuum left by the private sector.

(CBS)

Although the stock market is up sharply since then and the macro data are improving, the rebound remains sluggish. For an apprehensive public worried about job growth and confused about whether the glass is half full or half empty, the president gets no prize for preventing an even worse collapse.

Conservatives and independents were also alienated after the White House got involved in a counter-productive tiff with their favorite network when Fox News got accused of functioning as "a wing of the Republican Party."

The perennial left-right divide widened during the subsequent rancor over health care insurance reform, which found its expression in the protests orchestrated by the tea party movement and statements like that of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) that Republicans should seek to turn the debate over health care reform into Mr. Obama's "Waterloo."

The partisan bickering reached a climax in a bitter Christmas Eve denouement to the first year of the Obama presidency. All this has eroded the president's support. Only 13% of Republicans now approve of his performance in office. Mr. Obama's support among independents has fallen to 42% - a decline of 10 percentage points in the last few months, according to the poll results. Although the president retains the support of eight in ten Democrats, he is also getting an earful from the left wing of his party on a myriad of issues, like the closing of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility or for being too cozy with Wall Street.

Public opinion could still swing back in the president's favor if the economy stages a Lazarus-like revival. But those sorts of miracles come few and far between. (And did I mention that he's also got a few other tests ahead after pushing for an Afghanistan surge, as well as expanded military operations in Yemen - not to mention a revamp of an intelligence bureaucracy now focused on better connecting the dots.)

Until then, the president probably can expect more of the same from a nation increasingly unsure about what's supposed to happen next.

Read More:

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Poll: Obama Health Care Marks hit new Low
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Poll: 3 in 4 Support Airport Body Scans
Analysis: The Irony Behind Obama's Poll Numbers
CBS News Poll Database
Read the Complete Poll

Read the Complete Poll

Charles Cooper is an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.

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by mickrussom February 2, 2010 6:00 AM EST: Well, he is a profligate spender, a friend to the banksters, a traitor that defaces our credibility and currency and is a tool to Statist autocratic authoritarians erecting a police state and pissing on the constitution.

His approval should be 0. He is the scum of the earth and a traitor. He supports and enhances oligarchical collectivism and he need to be stopped. 2010 Obama, you will be frozen in place by a pissed off electorate you scum traitor.; Reply to this comment


by gmoore243 January 15, 2010 2:20 PM EST: As long as CBS reports Limbaugh's rants as legitimate news, then he will continue to be seen as a newsworthy person...

Limbaugh continues to prove that CBS News and others outlets are unwilling to do the job of "journalism," just as it failed in journalist integrity during the Bush years.

It is far easier for lazy news agencies to pit Rush against Obama for the entertainment value... This is the world of dishonest media.

Right now, CBS has no integrity if it feeds on Rush Limbaugh's thinking...; Reply to this comment


by ferrari5k January 15, 2010 2:07 AM EST: Why are we allowing these inept politicians to shove a health care plan hat cost more and delivers less than we now have down our throats? Only 36% of us support their catastophic plan, so why aren't we all threatening them with jail for conspiracy? This plan is only designed to increase middle class taxes and increase the revenue of the insurance giants. It seems the only way to stop them is to threaten a revolt as they won't listen to the public.; Reply to this comment


by Carlos52Leonel January 14, 2010 10:46 PM EST: I thinks that the Americans expect to much in the first year of Mr. President Obama administration, like if He was a magic man, to fix with a small sticks all the mistake that the last administration left. Remember that the economy was terrible before the elections and the $700 billions was in the congress during the Bush administration, almost was approval, then, Mr. Obama can't fix in one year all the wrong ways that now are affecting our lives, but wasn't just Mr. Bush the only guilty, was him and all his group of assessors. Please take patients and give to Mr. President Obama, one more year to fix all this mass.; Reply to this comment


by tbuontempo January 13, 2010 8:41 PM EST: The bottom line with the President's numbers, he has sold out the left base of the party. He sold us out on health care, the economy and the war.

He knows a single payer system will help the young, African American, small business and working class voters. He did not go to the mat with members of Congress on single payer, like he did for war funding. The corporations are going to make a killing on this health care bill. These are the same corporations whose profits are more important than the 40,000 to 60,000 Americans they are killing every year because they cannot afford health insurance, or expensive co-pays on health insurance.

With the economy, he has brought in the old capitalist/corporate guard,i.e. Larry Summers, Paul Volcker, and the newest old boy, Timothy Geithner. These guys are an integral part of the Friedrich von Hayek/Milton Friedman market economics model, which is killing small business and the working class (Sorry Dr.Krugman, market economics is killing us). Where the hell is the TARP for small business and the working class. How about a TARP to clear out the 60 billion in student loans holding down young people?

The war, $1.2 million a year per soldier. Whose making money? The same corporations, except Xe, who pushed the military industrial complex into privatization. This system cost more money than the government run military. The same companies whose contractors tortured and raped men, women, and yes, children in their corporate gulags. Stalin has nothing on these terrorist corporations, they could teach him a few tricks, i.e. how to get the average white guy to agree that torture and raping non-whites is not torture. .

As for the Teabaggers, they are a joke. They were created by corporate money, Fox News, to alleviate the pressure building in "white America" because their standard of living is tanking. They are correct, we need a revolution, just not one based on capitalists/social conservative ideology.; Reply to this comment


by miller51550 January 13, 2010 9:08 AM EST: I was NOT a Bush supporter, being a staunch Democrat.

But in the case of BHO, the more I learned the more fearful that I became.

Everyone talks about the Bush Administration leaving him a financial mess. (And the War on Terror was just plan nuts.)

But it seems that when you go back at start 'connecting the dots', it appears that when Clinton ( I loved the Man.) and the Demonocrats came up with the everyone has the 'right' to a home policy. That was the beginning of the end. When the Republicans cried wolf two years before the banking disaster, you had Dodd, Franks, Pelosi. Saying there was nothing wrong with Freddie and Fannie, that should have been an alarm bell going off.

The 'President Elect' was involved in the TARP Bill, and all the spending since then. Remember the candidate that made all the promises that he has not kept.

His poll numbers DESERVE to be lower than they are. But the Dems BLINDLY continue to support him.

His first year has been a disaster in the making, he and his cronies on the Hill are in the process of bankrupting the country. His Obamacare will make the middle class poorer, and insure that the poor are well taken care of.

Obama the 'Chains we can believe in.'; Reply to this comment


by vonstone1 January 12, 2010 3:18 PM EST: There is no irony in this. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. American's are now wide eyed and understand that the "garbage" sold by the elite news media of which CBS is part of and the "lies" told during the 2008 Presidental election by Obama and everyone carrying his water, were just that "lies". Some of us saw right through him and understood what he was - now everyone has to bear the "pain" he is so willingly dispensing to all Americans. The list of his shortfalls is so long you cannot possible list them all but the major ones are: 1) No Military experience/understanding for National Security issues, 2) No understanding of the Ecomony or what to do to restore growth, 3) Total lack of honor or honesty in regards to listening to the American people. Most Presidents would understand that they have hung themselves and take a step back and regroup for the "Health Plan Reform" debacle. Not Obama - he is charging ahead like the devil is biting his backside - perhaps Soros and the left wing lunutics are so strong (Pelosi and Reid) - that once he sold his soul to them he cannot rechart his own destiny.; Reply to this comment


by stevor January 12, 2010 1:46 PM EST: Obama was wet-behind-the ears. He made campaign promises that were essentially a Miss USA contestant saying they were for "mom, apple pie, Chevrolet, baseball, and peace in the world." Neither a beauty queen nor he had any inkling how to achieve either.
Unfortunately, too many people had some sort of "need" to believe in him or they fell for the growing feeling of whites that after all this time, they are still guilty of what happened to blacks long ago (even though Mr. Obama is more white than black because his father was half black and half middle eastern).
So, now we have an inept leader, who is really only a puppet of people such as George Soros who want a one-world-government, learning on-the-job as the country SUFFERS.; Reply to this comment


by stevor January 12, 2010 1:46 PM EST: Obama was wet-behind-the ears. He made campaign promises that were essentially a Miss USA contestant saying they were for "mom, apple pie, Chevrolet, baseball, and peace in the world." Neither a beauty queen nor he had any inkling how to achieve either.
Unfortunately, too many people had some sort of "need" to believe in him or they fell for the growing feeling of whites that after all this time, they are still guilty of what happened to blacks long ago (even though Mr. Obama is more white than black because his father was half black and half middle eastern).
So, now we have an inept leader, who is really only a puppet of people such as George Soros who want a one-world-government, learning on-the-job as the country SUFFERS.; Reply to this comment

by koko98-2009 January 12, 2010 12:18 PM EST

Obama's numbers are still TWICE as high as Bush's and he is still even with Reagan at the same point in his presidency.

Reply to this comment


by roach9703 January 12, 2010 3:50 PM EST: Good point! However his awful health care plan is a political suicide mission.


by cidaia January 13, 2010 10:38 AM EST: Gosh, liberals can't hear ANY criticism of Obama without trying to throw in Bush.

Bush was bad. So what? How does that make Obama any less of a loser?

Wasn't Obama supposed to have fixed global warming by now?