The White House, the Democrats, and the media are celebrating new polls showing a bounce in approval ratings for the president and the Democratic party:
NBC/WSJ Poll:
In the poll, Obama's job-approval rating stands at 53 percent, which is an eight-point jump from last month and represents his highest rating in the survey since July 2009. The improvement for Obama was across the board: Approval among independents moved from 35 percent in December to 46 percent now; among Democrats, it went from 76 percent to 86 percent; and among Republicans, it went from 11 percent to 15 percent.
Indies love bipartisanship and they also take to the "civility" argument so it's not surprising that Obama's numbers would jump in that category. It is also significant that many liberals have resigned themselves to Obama's lurch to the right and have gotten with the program.
But wait one:
"I think that this increase in his job approval is very important," says McInturff, the GOP pollster. "At the same time, these kind of rises have been transitory," he adds, referring to former President Clinton's immediate - but later fleeting - bump in approval after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.The poll also finds that 40 percent of respondents label Obama as a political moderate, compared with 45 percent who see him as a liberal and 11 percent who view him as a conservative. That moderate number is the highest for Obama in the NBC/WSJ poll, even higher than it was before his inauguration.
Americans have notoriously short memories when it comes to presidents which is why both Clinton and Obama seemingly successfully "moved to the center" and were perceived as far less liberal than their policies would indicate. In Clinton's case, he adopted welfare reform - after strenuously opposing it - which solidified his image as a "moderate." Obama has the Tucson speech and a slew of initiatives, including regulatory reform, that he is trying to show his move to the center.
Will it last? Abraham Lincoln's admonishment about "fooling all the people all the time" is instructive here. Sooner or later, people will wake up to the fact that the economy is not really getting much better, and that the reason can be laid at Obama's feet.
Expect those approval ratings to dip back below 50% once the glow from Obama's Tucson speech wears off.
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