Obama’s Star Is Fading

Why is the American president so unpopular? During his campaign, Barack Obama seemed to faultlessly sense America’s needs. But now that he is in the White House, he seems to have little connection to his country. While he is able to get important laws through Congress, his popularity is sinking. Why has Obama’s star faded so fast?

These are hard times for the followers of Barack Obama. Look for example at what happened with the ambitious climate law: Obama’s party in the Senate decided not to bring up the law for vote, which has been scuttled over for months. Democrats want to guide a limited energy law through the Senate, but that does little for the climate. The chance of a serious climate law seems to have passed for the rest of 2010 and possibly even for years. Critics say that Obama did too little to defend the law.

According to a recent opinion poll, six out of 10 voters lack “confidence that the president is capable of making the right decisions.” Only about 46 percent of Americans appreciated Obama’s performance this week; almost 49 percent gave him a negative report card.

This is a big difference from a year and a half ago. At his inauguration, almost 70 percent had a positive view of Obama. Few new presidents have gone down in popularity as fast as he has.

Paradox

But what is most remarkable is that Americans give Obama little credit for his successes. He managed in the past weeks to lengthen the benefits for thousands of jobless people and to expand the supervision on Wall Street. But those successes did not do him much good in the polls. On the contrary, according to a recent poll, 53 percent believe that Wall Street has profited “very much” from Obama’s policy, despite the new supervision.

Some commentators already speak of the “Obama Paradox.” Why does the man who passed health care reform through Congress — the most important social legislation since World War II — and who managed to get the most stringent supervision since the 1930s accepted, do so badly with his own people?

A part of the explanation is obvious. The economic recovery is slow. Unemployment is high. But, for a long time, while many Americans were feeling the economic pain, the heart of the president lay elsewhere — health care. Obama’s argument that he has been able to prevent a deterioration of the crisis thanks to his enormous stimulus law does not make a big impression.

Americans notice very little of Obama’s successes: Important parts of the health care reform bill will go into effect in only a few years; Wall Street’s reform has just been approved, although the question of how the consumer will be protected against banks and mortgage brokers still needs to be worked out.

Finally, according to his supporters, it is normal for Obama’s star to fade: The expectations were simply set too high. In their eyes, there is no reason for panic. Ronald Reagan, who also faced a recession at the beginning of his presidency, did equally poorly in the polls after a year and a half. As soon as the economy improved, Reagan’s report card went up. After four years, he was reelected with superior numbers. It will be the same for Obama, his trustees assure.

But according to others, the bad economy is not the complete story, nor do they believe that an Obama Paradox exists. In the eyes of political commentators, if one is able to guide very good and important laws through Congress but sells his policy badly, he will establish gains on some terrains but operate clumsily on the political scene. As the climate debate illustrates, Obama makes all of these crucial mistakes.

Killer Instinct

Progressive America is stumped by this question: Why did President Obama never face the fight over the climate law in the Senate? He didn’t even take a bold stand when the Gulf of Mexico was hit by an oil disaster. A president can make a difference using legislation: Nixon, for example, used a California oil disaster in 1969 to found the Environmental Protection Agency. If a Republican president dared to face that fight, why wouldn’t Obama?

Obama’s top advisers, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, believed from the beginning that it was not possible to get a climate law through the Senate. They did not expect support from the Republicans, and they thought the Democratic senators from mining and industry states would also be difficult — Obama should not waste political capital on that.

The president himself finally decided to play all of his cards on health reform first. But even when that was done, he wanted to play it safe in terms of climate. He carefully maneuvered behind the scenes and kept aloof regarding what he wanted. He gave his party leaders all the time and space they needed to seal compromises — he never butted heads.

According to the White House, they had to finally conclude “that a climate law cannot be handled now.” Quite a few Americans, however, doubt whether the president is aggressive enough. Does Obama possess the necessary political killer instinct? Nonsense, his followers say. Obama proved himself to be tough in the election battle. Nevertheless, the image of Obama as a man who does not dare to be resolute and who avoids conflict sticks. This was also witnessed with the health care reform, as he played this way to the end.

During the elections, Obama mesmerized America with his oratorical gifts. But remarkably enough, the president proved to be a bad communicator in the climate debate (as in the health care reform). He was never able to explain to the audience why it was in their interest that the problem was taken care of, nor could he explain how solving this problem would change their lives. The Republicans in the opposition reduced the potency of the climate problem, saying it disguised taxes and encouraged higher energy bills. Obama let them get away with it.

Polls

The White House knows about the bad polls. They promise trouble for the interim elections in November for the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate and a few governors’ posts. Mainly, the Democratic majority in the House may be threatened.

To ward off an electoral beating, the president went back on the campaign trail these last few days. With visits to New Jersey and Michigan, he tried to underline the effectiveness of his economic policy. In New York, he joined a popular breakfast TV program for women in order to stop his diminishing popularity with that voter group.

Obama’s advisers swear that nothing has been lost yet. The White House has put the tax reductions — which President Bush introduced in 2001 for people with high incomes — on the political agenda of Congress for after the summer holidays. As for Obama, he is not in favor of the tax reductions; however, he believes that the Republicans will vote to extend this policy. Earlier, almost all Republican senators voted against the extension of unemployment benefits.

The White House hopes to score political points with this tax policy in the election battle — it wants to portray the Republican opposition as a party who thinks only about the rich and holds on to a policy that threw America into a crisis.

Yet many Democrats are nervous because their seats are at risk in November. There is considerable grumbling over Obama within the party itself.

The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, said that the discontent over Obama’s war in Afghanistan is so loud that a presidential candidate could challenge Obama for the Democratic primaries in 2012. Such a suggestion would have been completely unthinkable a year and a half ago, when about 2 million people euphorically cheered on their newly inaugurated president at the Washington Mall.