FT.com / US / Politics & Foreign policy - Obama rating survives policy doubts: Five weeks after taking office, Barack Obama continues to ride high in the polls – with about two-thirds of Americans approving of his job performance.
But the numbers also show a divergence between the public’s view of Mr Obama and growing scepticism towards his policies, including the $787bn stimulus he signed last week and the $75bn plan to help struggling homeowners that he announced the following day.
In remarks released on Tuesday night ahead of his scheduled address to Congress on the economy, Mr Obama said he had identified $2,000bn in costs that could be cut over the next decade. The president, who has vowed to halve the deficit by the end of his first term and is due to present his budget to Congress this week, said he also intended to root out waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare programmes.
“My budget does not attempt to solve every problem or address every issue,’’ he said. “It reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited – a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis and a costly recession.’’
Mr Obama went on to respond to Republican criticisms that he was sounding too alarmist about the state of the US economy.
“While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; tonight I want every American to know this: we will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before,” he said.
According to a Washington Post/ABC poll on Tuesday, Mr Obama’s approval rating is at 68 per cent – the highest at this stage in office since Ronald Reagan in 1981.
A separate New York Times/CBS poll found 77 per cent of Americans were optimistic about the next four years under Mr Obama in spite of conveying pessimism about the economy and their own personal circumstances.
The polls showed narrow majorities in favour of more stimulus spending to revive the economy but also rising alarm about the size of the budget deficit, which is set to exceed $1,500bn this year.
Large majorities opposed further bail-outs of the car industry. But, by almost equally large margins, people approved of the way Mr Obama was handling the economic crisis.
“There are clearly contradictory feelings about the policies Mr Obama is pursuing,” said Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Research Centre. “In essence, these numbers reflect the public’s desire for leadership coupled with confusion about the economic times we are living in.”
Perhaps more troubling for Mr Obama was the divergence between Democratic and Republican voters, who appeared for a brief spell to be united in their hopes for a “post-partisan” era of national politics. That sentiment is dissolving rapidly.
In some respects this plays into Mr Obama’s hands – 61 per cent approve of his handling of the crisis, against just 38 per cent for the performance of Republicans, according to the Post.
But Republican voters are increasingly hostile. The president this week blamed “cable [television] chatter” for some of the scepticism towards his economic plans. But a recent Pew poll found that 47 per cent of Republicans believed Mr Obama’s national security policies had made a terrorist attack on the US more likely.
At the same time, support for Mr Obama’s leadership has grown among independent voters – the usual arbiters of election outcomes and the group for whom bipartisanship matters most. According to the most recent Gallup poll, 34 per cent of US voters describe themselves as independents.
“Every time Obama reaches out his hand to Republicans and they bite it, he wins among independents,” says Charlie Cook, author of the Cook Political Report. “The White House is playing the situation skilfully. It has made operational mistakes ... but it hasn’t yet made any big strategic blunders.
“The question is whether his reach is longer than his grasp.”
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