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Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page began his career in journalism as editor for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Inquirer, and received his ...
Read more about By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services.
Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page began his career in journalism as editor for the Middletown Journal and Cincinnati Inquirer, and received his ...
Read more about By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services.
Obama Faces a Chilly Fall
By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services
Watching President Obama's poll numbers slide in recent weeks takes me
back to the worst moments of the presidential campaign. I'm not
thinking of Obama's presidential campaign. I'm thinking five years ago
to Sen. John Kerry's losing campaign.
And I am wondering, as I did with Kerry, why didn't Obama see it coming?
An ad campaign by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, backed by some deep-pocket donors, torpedoed Kerry's strongest personal selling point in the Massachusetts Democrat's presidential quest, his heroic Vietnam record. By the time he responded to the charges, valuable weeks of momentum were lost.
Obama's fast-response strategy avoided that sort of trap when the mud came flying against him last year. But what happened to that well-oiled machine when the August protests erupted against his health care proposals at congressional town halls this year?
Where are the excited youngsters who dropped their video games, got off the couch and turned out en masse for Obama last year? Hah! Young folks aren't turned on by health care. They don't think they'll ever get sick.
Instead, lots of us older folks turned out. They included seniors over age 65 who are on Medicare and not likely to be affected by the new proposals. You may remember that seniors also weren't supposed to be affected by President Bush's Social Security reform proposals, but that didn't stop them from turning out in protest. The more speeches Bush gave around the country, the more opposition he faced until the proposal died.
Obama faces a similar predicament as his poll numbers have plummeted from their record-setting highs with record-setting speed. Tuesday the president hit his lowest approval yet during his young term in office -- 45 percent of voters in a daily Rasmussen Reports tracking poll said they approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent disapproved.
Although more than four out of five Democrats approve, and the same percentage of Republicans disapprove, Obama's biggest headache is with self-described independents. Sixty-six percent of them disapprove.
Granted, Rasmussen is just one poll, and daily tracking polls are by nature very changeable. But other major pollsters have found similar trends. Besides, Rasmussen's poll focuses on "likely voters." Most others look at a sample of "all adults," which tends to give Obama a larger percentage, but not of the people who are likely to be deciding his reelection chances.
Why the slide? Let me count the ways:
Economic recovery appears to be happening, but not by much. Wall Street is a leading indicator, but jobs are a lagging indicator. At this rate, economists say, it could be months before we see an upturn in jobs, despite promising news from Wall Street, and no one can say how many months.
His stimulus package? Same problem. Economic experts say it has softened the impact of the recession and begun to create some jobs, but not as many as the economy has lost.
Bad recent news from Afghanistan has caused Obama trouble, especially on his left, as his advisors call for more troops without providing much of an exit strategy.
But Obama's slide appears to have come mostly because of mixed signals from the White House as to how closely Obama will stick to a public option to compete with private insurers in his final proposals.
His plan also has been hurt by the lack of a clear argument as to what his proposal means for those of us who already have health care. It is heartwarming to hear him argue belatedly that health care is a moral issue. But the biggest motivator in politics is a very practical question: Where's mine? Sure, our health care system is broken, but Obama needs to answer those nervous swing voters who wonder, as an old Johnnie Taylor tune goes, whether "it's cheaper to keep her."
Without strong leadership from the White House, the Senate has been casting about for alternatives to a public option such as a national system of nonprofit co-ops run by the insured instead of the government. But no one is quite sure of what that might look like on a national scale. As Susan Dentzer, editor of the Health Affairs journal, recently put it, "The main definition of a co-op at the moment seems to be that it's not a public plan and it's not private health insurance. It's a Goldilocks -- 'something in-between.' "
Obama continues to display his famous cool, but a raucous autumn lies ahead. It's not hard to see that coming.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage(at)tribune.com, or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207.
(c) 2008 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
This news arrived on: 09/02/2009
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Posted Comments:
09-07-2009 17:01
JCE wrote:
You offered nothing but typical conservatism hypocrisy and lies, nothing of any substance. As usual for you, under any handle. And as I have said so many times, it isn't just Bush and the republicans, who, altho they have a lot to answer for from the last decade, it is both parties, but mostly partisan voters like you who allow it. Let the guilt be put where it is, big business, the government they own, and the partisan voter who sets it all up, and keeps making it happen. You blame Bush if you want, he isn't bright enough, capable enough, or hasn't lived long enough and had power long enough to get us in this mess all by himself.
09-07-2009 09:35
RWET wrote:
Why do take so long to say nothing? I offered a simple and effective solution to the problem. You like BHO offer only more words.
09-05-2009 17:21
JCE wrote:
And even tho it is wrong according to conservative and republican standards, just what is wrong with keeping up with current events, and history, learning, even if it is a word you don't know, but one that fits, and is apt, and what is wrong with being right, and standing up with the truth for the American people and country, for freedom, law and order? As far as Obama, I doubt that most presidents, when they get into office, and find out the truth of the NWO bosses, the congress, the voter and the people, don't wish they had known what they were getting into, crooked politician or not, as I have said all along. Hanging them all won't work. One, some of not guilty of hanging offenses, and have rights as human citizens. Two, what about the accomplices, people like you who vote and support them? Should we hang you as well? You would treat the symptom not the illness, and some other fool would come in and either vote like you, or act like the current politician. Why would you not want to fix things? How do you benefit by continuing to support them? Usually when people are as mean and bitter and full of hatred, as you seem to be, it is because of a life time of bad personal choices. The opposite is true. That is why, even with the country in the mess it is in, I am so happy in my personal and professional life. As long as you have breath, it isn't to late for you to start making sense, and some good decisions that will bring you happiness. Never to late.
09-05-2009 17:08
JCE wrote:
RWET
No, as usual you are wrong. You can't blame a cat for being a cat, even if you have messed its head up, and it is a dysfunctional animal from the abuse you gave it. The supercapitalists are what they are, a given, a known, like rain, and on a rainy day that you want sun, you can't blame the sun. But you can blame yourself for unrealistic planning. The main ones at fault here are the people, those who are to lazy or apathetic to take their right to vote seriously, their obligation to safeguard their freedom, as they were warned to do, by the founding fathers. The supercapitalists have shown all along what they were going to do, and what they were doing. But Americans vote less than any other country that has a voting system. And they also let the media, and the propaganda machine, the powerful one of the right, and the puny one of the left, and the public school system, brainwash them into supporting blindly the supercapitalists. We need government reform, health care reform, energy reform, foreign policy reform, banking reform, human rights to be allowed, infrastructure of the country brought up to date, IT technology reform, and voting and lobbyist reform, which will, like gay rights, a womans right to choose, marriage rights, being allowed to vote when the constitution said you had the right, but white men with guns said you didn't, change when the people want them to change. Not the government, not the businesses, not the SC, but the people. Look at all the RWET propaganda about the sanctity of marriage. Then look at the states with gay marriage, and you will see that they have the least amount of divorce, which shows that gay marriage didn't hurt straight marriage, but somehow, it all made straight marriages stronger. It was the people who did that. People who believe in human rights, and the Bible. The ones who hold progress back? People like you.
09-05-2009 08:45
RWET wrote:
Wow Jce has learned some new words but the message is the same. Everything is the fault of big business and the republicans and Bush. Poor BO if only he had known,wakeup he is as crooked as the rest of them. Hang them all.
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