Has Obama changed his tune as his approval rating sags?
This morning came news that President Obama’s Gallup approval rating tumbled seven points since last week, to mark his lowest point since his re-election. Don’t get too excited, Republicans–your approval ratings aren’t exactly sterling and one week does not necessarily signify a trend.
But it appears the administration is well aware of its sagging poll numbers. The Obama of this week is a vastly different Obama than the one of the prior months. Most notably, he’s on the phone with Republican Senators, trying to forge a new deficit reduction deal. That marks a stark difference from Obama pre-sequester, who hit the “campaign trail” without even bothering to negotiate with Republicans on averting the sequester cuts.
Americans appear to have tired of Obama’s act a little, and how he portrays himself as a helpless victim of the minority party in Washington. Americans didn’t hire Obama to play the victim, they hired him to be the supposed leader of our Government. They hired him to be a uniter, not the divider he has been for at least the last year or so.
Obama appears to realize he miscalculated on the sequester. He and his administration were caught in several outright exaggerations and/or lies about its effects, such as how janitors at the Capitol and thousands of teachers would or had already received pink slips because of it. He even tried to hide the fact that the sequester idea itself came from his administration, but Bob Woodward and others rightly debunked that notion.
He went on the road and sounded the same old narrative–that Republicans were interested in protecting the rich against the best interests of the country. Trouble is, Republicans had just agreed to a tax hike on the rich, those making $400,000 a year or higher, not two months before in a deal to avert the fiscal cliff. I would certainly hope that Americans realize a tax hike every two months in Washington may be a little too much to ask, especially with news today that the federal coffers might take in a record amount from taxes this year.
Obama still has time to salvage things and actually take the lead in getting things done in DC. This week and last he called at least four Republican senators: Rob Portman of Ohio, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Susan Collins of Maine. Last week he invited John McCain and Lindsey Graham to the White House to discuss immigration and fiscal policy. Good for him.
If Obama makes an honest effort to reach out to Republicans and forge honest compromise, he will find himself much more admired when his presidency ends. That’s what Bill Clinton did with Newt Gingrich and others, and it reflected positively upon his time in office.
The Government will shut down at the end of March if no fiscal agreement is reached between Republicans and Democrats. Now would be a great time to forge compromise, but Obama has to realize that another significant tax hike is not the answer this time around. We need to cut spending. This government borrows over $30,000 a second to sustain itself, and that is unacceptable. As anyone who works in government as I do knows, there are many common sense ways to reduce spending and government waste that won’t cripple us.
But we need a leader to show us the way, and it needs to be the President.
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