Just to briefly elaborate on the point I made last week, here are comparable plots of President Obama's overall job approval and approval of his handling of health care:
As you can see, what's happening on health care is a leading indicator of the end of Obama's honeymoon period. As we return to our normal, highly polarized political climate, most Republicans and Republican-leaning independents will disapprove of a Democratic president's performance in office and his handling of high-salience issues, especially in a bad economy. As a result, Obama's numbers will inevitably decline across the board -- this reality shouldn't be surprising to anyone who works in or reports on politics.
Going forward, we should focus on more important questions. First, how much will Obama's approval numbers decline? Given the state of the economy, it wouldn't be surprising to see him in the low- to mid-40s by the end of the year. Second, what is the distribution of opinion on Obama's handling of health care? Aggregate public opinion on the issue is less relevant than how it's playing in the states of key senators whose votes will determine the fate of the legislation in Congress.
I've never really understood the obsession with the presidential 'honeymoon'. It seems to me that people tend to like the new guy until he tries to do something (or after some time has passed, fails to do something).
Is there much evidence that American presidents are actually able to accomplish more during their first 6 months than they are able to accomplish in any 6 month period after that?
Posted by: Jinchi | July 28, 2009 at 02:15 PM