;)
Tuesday
Jul212009
Should Obama worry?
Tuesday, July 21, 2009 at 1:30PM Yes, he should. Since his inauguration, Obama has lost 10 percentage points in his job approval rating. That's one of the largest and fastest declines for any new president in the past half century. And for better or worse, there is a correlation between a president's popularity and his ability to get things done. When LBJ was moving his Great Society programs in 1965, his popularity was in the 60-70% range. When Bill Clinton was stymied on health care, I believe that his approval rating was straddling 50%. It's already clear that Obama is not going to enjoy the long-term stratospheric-like ratings that Ike or JFK did. But he cannot fall much further in his job approval rating and expect to successfully pursue his ambitious agenda.
Reader Comments (1)
Ike and JFK also didn't have the 7X24 news cycle to contend with either, e.g., the Internet, YouTube, cable, etc.) that 'gives every dog their day' for the sake of content. Under current conditions 49% may be strong. There is no doubt that the lack of job growth is hurting and will hurt more as time goes buy if nothing is done to directly attack the problem. Also hurting is loss of some of his base support (myself included) due to his failure to date to carry through on campaign promises such as don't ask don't tell, closing GITMO.