Obama's Popularity Among Young People in Free Fall

If he was one of the only leaders to be re-elected despite the economic crisis, it is because his compatriots trusted him. Whatever their opinion of his policies, the American people had a good personal opinion of Barack Obama.

The National Security Agency’s mass surveillance on global communications, the pursuits against journalists or the targeting of tea party groups by tax services have eroded this sympathy capital — the rate of likeability, or one of the leading measures of a politician — if one believes the political commentators.

In just a month, according to an opinion poll published by CNN Monday, June 17, Obama has seen his approval ratings fall by eight points, settling at 45 percent, his lowest score in 18 months.

Even more importantly, it is with young people that Obama has lost the most ground, having lost 17 points in a month among those younger than 30, his approval ratings deteriorating to 48 percent, the first time they have fallen below 50 percent in this category.

The number of Americans who say he is “honest” has fallen to nine points or 49 percent. Obama is paying for the impression of doublespeak and for the cover-ups of the most recent affairs. Trust was his main asset.

Six out of 10 Americans disapprove of how he handled the revelations of the surveillance program on citizens — even if, on the topic of the program itself, Americans are divided, if we are to believe the first opinion polls published after Edward Snowden’s escape to Hong Kong, the first “Western dissident.”

Among those in the Facebook generation, the disaffection is remarkable. This is combined with a rise in hostility toward state authority. Sixty percent of those aged 18 to 34 think that the federal government has become so powerful that it poses “an immediate threat” to the rights and freedoms of its citizens. However, we are talking about a generation that hides nothing on the Internet.

Yes We Scan

The “Yes We Can” president obviously has not succeeded at convincing the public. Before leaving for Europe, he gave an interview, which was broadcast Monday evening on Charlie Rose, the host of “intellectual” shows on PBS. Obama spoke about the NSA’s wiretapping and of authorizing the delivery of arms to the Syrian opposition, another decision that did not fare well — 70 percent of Americans opposed it, according to the Pew Research Center.

On the subject of electronic surveillance, the president looks down his nose at the critics. They have reproached him for being “a radical leftist.” They are “comparing him now to Dick Cheney,” he notes — a shocking turn to the previous vice president, even though it may have been said in passing because Edward Snowden also invoked him by assuring that being treated as a traitor by Dick Cheney is an “honor.”

Obama assures us that his main concern has always been to put in a place a system with enough safeguards.

“I’ve set up a privacy and civil liberties oversight board, made up of independent citizens including some fierce civil libertarians,” he recalls, while announcing a vast national debate. The hitch is that the commission still has not been convened because it lacks some of its members.

Finally Barack Obama assures us that his compatriots — as well as the Europeans — have to understand that all of these surveillance programs are allowed in order to foil attacks on the U.S. and “also elsewhere.” The head of the espionage, James Clapper, has to publicize these examples, so that they can be studied.

And he formally reminds us: Americans have nothing to fear. “If you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails without a warrant.”