Would Obama Be America’s Darling?

If Barack Obama wins the 2012 presidential elections it will probably be thanks to his personality and the sympathetic nature he inspires rather than the economic results he has achieved or his handling of affairs. The poll conducted by the New York Times, Quinnipiac University and CBS in three key states – Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida – gives the current president an advantage over these measures and shows that Americans would be conscious of the difficulty of overcoming the current financial crisis in a single term.

Let’s not forget Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s limited appeal in which the past Bain affair and the opaqueness of his public financial life gives him a discomforting if not outright aggressively defiant air, which even his own political friends have difficulty understanding.

Will the campaign weigh heavily on trust and sympathy? This would be a just return of things for the country that invented publicity and where David Ogilvy, a trade mogul, repeats again and again: “Make the product the hero.” And thus, we have the “superhero” candidates.

With three months till the elections and a very narrow perspective, Romney doesn’t make a difference. If voters don’t approve of the president’s handling of the economy, they’re not throwing themselves into the arms of the probable Republican candidate whom they judge to be opaque in regard to his business and his personal finances. The most moderate of interviewees doesn’t see what experience Romney would draw on to handle public affairs. The huge negative bashing of Romney’s personality from Obama’s campaign has, without a doubt, left a mark even on voters who say they have not been influenced. In Florida and Ohio, Obama would have a six point advantage. In Pennsylvania, the gap climbed to 11 points!

What’s new in the three key states is that half of the voters admitted that economic change moves slowly and that with more time the voting results could increase. This idea of toughing it out to fight a crisis of such never-before-seen magnitude allows Obama to better play up his personality.

It is in the realm of social measures that Obama gets real support. In the three key states, he made a break with his proposition to tax high revenues of $250,000: 58 percent in Florida, 60 percent in Ohio and 62 percent in Pennsylvania. It is with these types of propositions that he could become a middle class hero and take the upper hand in sympathy over his adversary.