July 31, 2009 1:34 PM
- Text
Will Ratings Drop Impede Obama's Agenda?
(The Politico)
This story was written by Ben Smith.
A slew of recent polls showing President Barack Obama's job approval ratings at essentially normal levels and a partisan divide reasserting itself suggest that the political landscape was not as dramatically transformed last November as Democrats had hoped.
The question now is whether those numbers will impede the president's ability to achieve the transformative goals he set out for himself, particularly in the area of health care, where members of Congress crucial to his success may feel they have to respond to shifting public opinion.
After months of showing sky-high job approval ratings, polls from major newspapers and from the Pew and Gallup organizations this week gave Obama the lowest numbers of his presidency. He is less popular than either George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush at this point in their presidencies, though more popular than Bill Clinton was after seven months in office.
Obama's level of support now neatly matches the number of voters who elected him - with 52 percent of Americans approving of his job performance, while 42 percent disapprove, according to an average of major surveys. At the same time, Republicans are acting like Republicans again - nearly 80 percent of them disapprove of Obama's performance - and disapproval among independent voters is growing steadily.
The country has also grown skeptical of his power to effect change: This week's NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found a sharp drop, to 51 percent, in the share of Americans who say it's "very" or "fairly" likely that Obama "will bring real change in direction to the country."
"Expecting the politics of the country to transform around a new president is asking a bit much of the president and of the system," said Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal, a Democratic pollster who noted that Americans who voted for Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's 2008 Republican opponent, appear to have returned to the opposition. "As of the snapshot of the moment, things look about like they did last October," he said. "If you're a Democrat, you ought to be concerned with the trajectory."
White House officials professed to be unsurprised that reality has reasserted itself. "The president always said to us that, at some point, we were going to hit the shoals of inertia," said one White House aide. "That's happening now."
Other Democrats point out that while Obama's job approval has declined, he remains personally popular, though the share of Americans who say he's trustworthy also fell in the NBC/WSJ poll.
"The important thing is that even in pretty challenging times, he retains a lot of important redeeming qualities with voters, including his likability and the sense that he is smart and deals with problems honestly," said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin.
A senior administration official compared Obama's situation with that of Ronald Reagan when he was president. "It most tracks Reagan, in that you have personal attributes that are very high, and where people genuinely trust and like the president and want him to succeed, but the policies aren't as popular," he said. "The job approval was going to come down. We're in the worst recession since FDR - you're not going to have a great job approval. Personal attributes are still very high, and people trust him. They think he's here for the right reasons. They think he wants to do the right thing."
Other Democrats are less sanguine. They link his slide to the most visible signs of inertia - the health care reform battle - and warn that the poll numbers themselves could make that sale harder. The White House chose to leave the details of the plan to Congress, allowing its content to be ill defined while its massive cost became very clear.
A Pew Research Center poll released Thursday found that 44 percent oppose "health care plans currently before Congress," while just 38 percent favor the plans. Approval of Obama's handling of the issue slid 9 percentage points since April.
Those declining numbers lend themselves to two interpretations. One is that the White House misunderstood its mandate and the scale of change the public seeks.
"The public wanted change, but it didn't want dramatic change with massive expenditures, big government," said Doug Schoen, a conservative Democratic pollster. "It wants it done on an incremental, bipartisan basis."
The sense that the country is settling toward customary patterns is a relief to Republicans, who said they were not surprised by it, either." It was only a matter of time until these debates led to independents pulling away from support to the Democratic agenda and leaning more toward the Republican perspective on that agenda," said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.
But allies of the president offer a second interpretation: that the bad health care numbers, at least, reflect a failure only of messaging, and one that has been corrected in recent days.
In the same Pew poll that shows health care reform to be unpopular, Pew analysts also perceived a possible road map to reviving support for it. "Although the public has a more negative than positive general reaction to the health care proposals being debated on Capitol Hill, there is broad support for many of the core elements of the legislation currently before Congress," they wrote, noting broad support for requiring all Americans to have coverage and requiring insurance companies to cover them.
But the danger now for Obama is that his falling poll numbers may themselves short-circuit progress on the issue, as Democratic legislators edge away from the White House. That's a possibility that seemed strengthened by a Virginia poll also released Thursday, which suggested that the gubernatorial election there in November will be dominated by McCain voters, as Obama supporters fade from the electorate.
"Transformative presidents aren't always popular, and they tend to have a more polarizing effect," said veteran Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, who also noted that Reagan's approval ratings dipped dangerously in his first term. The key, he said, is Obama's ability to achieve a transformative agenda. "These numbers don't matter unless they spook the Democrats."
By Ben Smith
A slew of recent polls showing President Barack Obama's job approval ratings at essentially normal levels and a partisan divide reasserting itself suggest that the political landscape was not as dramatically transformed last November as Democrats had hoped.
The question now is whether those numbers will impede the president's ability to achieve the transformative goals he set out for himself, particularly in the area of health care, where members of Congress crucial to his success may feel they have to respond to shifting public opinion.
After months of showing sky-high job approval ratings, polls from major newspapers and from the Pew and Gallup organizations this week gave Obama the lowest numbers of his presidency. He is less popular than either George W. Bush or George H.W. Bush at this point in their presidencies, though more popular than Bill Clinton was after seven months in office.
Obama's level of support now neatly matches the number of voters who elected him - with 52 percent of Americans approving of his job performance, while 42 percent disapprove, according to an average of major surveys. At the same time, Republicans are acting like Republicans again - nearly 80 percent of them disapprove of Obama's performance - and disapproval among independent voters is growing steadily.
The country has also grown skeptical of his power to effect change: This week's NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found a sharp drop, to 51 percent, in the share of Americans who say it's "very" or "fairly" likely that Obama "will bring real change in direction to the country."
"Expecting the politics of the country to transform around a new president is asking a bit much of the president and of the system," said Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal, a Democratic pollster who noted that Americans who voted for Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's 2008 Republican opponent, appear to have returned to the opposition. "As of the snapshot of the moment, things look about like they did last October," he said. "If you're a Democrat, you ought to be concerned with the trajectory."
White House officials professed to be unsurprised that reality has reasserted itself. "The president always said to us that, at some point, we were going to hit the shoals of inertia," said one White House aide. "That's happening now."
Other Democrats point out that while Obama's job approval has declined, he remains personally popular, though the share of Americans who say he's trustworthy also fell in the NBC/WSJ poll.
"The important thing is that even in pretty challenging times, he retains a lot of important redeeming qualities with voters, including his likability and the sense that he is smart and deals with problems honestly," said Democratic pollster Geoff Garin.
A senior administration official compared Obama's situation with that of Ronald Reagan when he was president. "It most tracks Reagan, in that you have personal attributes that are very high, and where people genuinely trust and like the president and want him to succeed, but the policies aren't as popular," he said. "The job approval was going to come down. We're in the worst recession since FDR - you're not going to have a great job approval. Personal attributes are still very high, and people trust him. They think he's here for the right reasons. They think he wants to do the right thing."
Other Democrats are less sanguine. They link his slide to the most visible signs of inertia - the health care reform battle - and warn that the poll numbers themselves could make that sale harder. The White House chose to leave the details of the plan to Congress, allowing its content to be ill defined while its massive cost became very clear.
A Pew Research Center poll released Thursday found that 44 percent oppose "health care plans currently before Congress," while just 38 percent favor the plans. Approval of Obama's handling of the issue slid 9 percentage points since April.
Those declining numbers lend themselves to two interpretations. One is that the White House misunderstood its mandate and the scale of change the public seeks.
"The public wanted change, but it didn't want dramatic change with massive expenditures, big government," said Doug Schoen, a conservative Democratic pollster. "It wants it done on an incremental, bipartisan basis."
The sense that the country is settling toward customary patterns is a relief to Republicans, who said they were not surprised by it, either." It was only a matter of time until these debates led to independents pulling away from support to the Democratic agenda and leaning more toward the Republican perspective on that agenda," said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.
But allies of the president offer a second interpretation: that the bad health care numbers, at least, reflect a failure only of messaging, and one that has been corrected in recent days.
In the same Pew poll that shows health care reform to be unpopular, Pew analysts also perceived a possible road map to reviving support for it. "Although the public has a more negative than positive general reaction to the health care proposals being debated on Capitol Hill, there is broad support for many of the core elements of the legislation currently before Congress," they wrote, noting broad support for requiring all Americans to have coverage and requiring insurance companies to cover them.
But the danger now for Obama is that his falling poll numbers may themselves short-circuit progress on the issue, as Democratic legislators edge away from the White House. That's a possibility that seemed strengthened by a Virginia poll also released Thursday, which suggested that the gubernatorial election there in November will be dominated by McCain voters, as Obama supporters fade from the electorate.
"Transformative presidents aren't always popular, and they tend to have a more polarizing effect," said veteran Democratic consultant Bob Shrum, who also noted that Reagan's approval ratings dipped dangerously in his first term. The key, he said, is Obama's ability to achieve a transformative agenda. "These numbers don't matter unless they spook the Democrats."
By Ben Smith
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