Mort Zuckerman: Obama Is Barely Treading Water
The president's problem is simple: the economy and jobs
By _Mortimer B. Zuckerman_
(http://politics.usnews.com/Topics/tag/Author/z/mortimer_zuckerman/index.html)
Posted: July 2, 2010
The hope that fired up the election of Barack Obama has flickered out,
leaving a national mood of despair and disappointment. Americans are dispirited
over how wrong things are and uncertain they can be made right again. Hope
may have been a quick breakfast, but it has proved a poor supper. A year
and a half ago Obama was walking on water. Today he is barely treading
water. Then, his soaring rhetoric enraptured the nation. Today, his speeches
cannot lift him past a 45 percent approval rating.
There is a widespread feeling that the government doesn't work, that it is
incapable of solving America's problems. Americans are fed up with
Washington, fed up with Wall Street, fed up with the necessary but
ill-conceived
stimulus program, fed up with the misdirected healthcare program, and with
pretty much everything else. They are outraged and feel that the system is
not a level playing field, but is tilted against them. The millions of
unemployed feel abandoned by the president, by the Democratic Congress, and by
the Republicans.
The American people wanted change, and who could blame them? But now there
is no change they can believe in. Sixty-two percent believe we are headed
in the wrong direction­—a record during this administration. All the
polls indicate that anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment is greater than
it has been in many years. For the first time, Obama's disapproval rating
has topped his approval rating. In a recent CBS News poll, there is a meager
15 percent approval rating for Congress. In all polls, voters who call
themselves independents have swung against the administration and against
incumbents.
Even some in Obama's base have turned, with 17 percent of Democrats
disapproving of his job performance. Even more telling is the excitement gap.
Only 44 percent of those who voted for him express high interest in this year's
elections. That's a 38-point drop from 2008. By contrast, 71 percent of
those who voted Republican last time express high interest in the midterm
elections, above the level at this stage in 2008. And these are the people who
vote.
Republicans are benefiting not because they have a credible or popular
program—they don't—but because they are not Democrats. In a recent Wall Street
Journal/NBC poll, nearly two thirds of those who favor Republican control
of Congress say they are motivated primarily by opposition to Obama and
Democratic policy. Disapproval of Congress is so widespread, a recent Gallup
poll suggests, that by a margin of almost two to one, Americans would rather
vote for a candidate with no experience than for an incumbent. Throw the
bums out is the mood. How could this have happened so quickly?
The fundamental problem is starkly simple: jobs and the deepening fear
among the public that the American dream is vanishing before their eyes. The
economy's erratic improvement has helped Wall Street but has brought little
support to Main Street. Some 6.8 million people have been unemployed in the
last year for six months or longer. Their valuable skills are at risk,
affecting their economic productivity for years to come. Add to this
despairing
army the large number of those only partially employed and those who have
given up their search for work, and we have cumulative totals in the tens
of millions.
Many people who joined the middle class, especially those who joined in the
last few years, have now fallen back. It's not over yet. Millions cannot
make minimum payments on their credit cards, or are in default or
foreclosure on their mortgages, or are on food stamps. Well over 100,000
people file
for bankruptcy every month. Some 3 million homeowners are estimated to face
foreclosure this year, on top of 2.8 million last year. Millions of homes
are located next to or near a foreclosed home, and it is the latter that
may determine the price of all the homes on the street. There have been
dramatically sharp declines in home equity, representing cumulative losses in
the trillions of dollars in what has long been the largest asset on the
average American family's balance sheet. Most of those who lost their homes
are
hard-working, middle-class Americans who had lost their jobs. Now many have
to use credit cards to pay for essentials and make ends meet, and they are
running out of credit. Another $5 trillion has been lost from pensions and
savings.
But it is jobs that have long represented the stairway to upward mobility
in America. For a long time, it was feared they were vulnerable to offshore
competition (and indeed still are), but now the erosion is from economic
decline at home. What happens as those domestic opportunities recede?
Middle-class families fear they have become downwardly mobile and have not hit
the
bottom yet. The financial security that was once based on home equity and
a pension has been swept away.
In a survey just released, the Pew Research Center explored the recession's
impact on households and how they are changing their spending and saving
behavior. Nearly half the adults polled intend to boost their savings, cut
their discretionary budgets, and cut their debt loads. The report concludes
that the present enforced frugality will outlast the recession and its
overhang. Fully 60 percent of those ages 50 to 61 say they may delay
retirement. What does that mean for the young would-be employees entering the
labor
force over the next few years?
The administration's stimulus program, because of the way Congress put it
together, has created far fewer jobs than anyone expected given the huge
price tag of almost $800 billion. It was supposed to constrain unemployment at
8 percent, but the recession took the rate way above that and in the
process humbled the Obama presidency. Some 25 million jobless or underemployed
people now wish to work full time, but few companies are ready to hire. No
speech is going to change that.
Little wonder there has been a gradual public disillusionment. Little
wonder people have come alive to the issue of excess spending with
entitlements
out of control as far as the eye can see. The hope was that Obama would
focus on the economy and jobs. That was the number one issue for the public—
not healthcare. Yet the president spent almost a year on a healthcare bill.
Eighty-five percent in one poll thought the great healthcare crisis was
about cost. It was and is, but the president's bill was about extending
coverage. It did nothing about the first concern and focused mostly on the
second.
Even worse, to win its approval he accepted the kind of scratch-my-back
deal-making that suggests corruption in the political process. And as a
result, Obama's promise to change "politics as usual" disappeared.
The president failed to communicate the value of what he wants to
communicate. To a significant number of Americans, what came across was a new
president trying to do too much in a hurry and, at the same time, radically
change the equation of American life in favor of too much government. This
feeling is intensified by Obama's emotional distance from the public. He
conveys
a coolness and detachment that limits the number of people who feel
connected to him.
Americans today strongly support a pro-growth economic agenda that includes
fiscal discipline, limited government, and deficit reduction. They fear
the country is coming apart, while the novelty of Obama has worn off, along
with the power of his position as the non-Bush. His decline in popularity
has emboldened the opposition to try to block him at every turn.
Historically, presidents with approval ratings below 50 percent—Obama is at
45—lose an average of 41 House seats in midterm elections. This year, that
would return the House of Representatives to Republican control. The
Democrats will suffer disproportionately from a climate in which so many
Americans are either dissatisfied or angry with the government, for Democrats
are
in the large majority in both houses and have to defend many more districts
than Republicans. In any election year, voters' feelings typically settle
in by June. But now they are being further hardened by the loose regulation
that preceded the poisonous oil spill—and the tardy government response.
The promise of economic health that might salvage industries and jobs, and
provide a safety net, has proved illusory. The support for cutting spending
and cutting the deficit reflects in part the fact that the American public
feels the Obama-Congress spending program has not worked. As for the
healthcare reform bill, the most recent Rasmussen survey indicates that 52
percent of the electorate supports repeal of the measure—42 percent of them
strongly.
It is clear that the magical moment of Obama's campaign conveyed a spell
that is now broken in the context of the growing public disillusionment.
Obama's rise has been spectacular, but so too has been his fall.
Copyright © 2010 U.S.News & World Report
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