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A new Washington Post poll is sure to be the talk of the town today, since at first glance it seems to fit in with the pessismism about Democrats meme now tromping around the Capitol. But it also seems to suggest that perhaps the American public understands what's going on pretty well. The president has an approval rating of 57 percent, which is good-not-great by Obama standards, even as 49 percent think he will make the right decisions for the country (weird result there). But the most accurate findings are these:
Forty-nine percent now say they think he will be able to spearhead significant improvements in the system, down nearly 20 percentage points from before he took office.As challenges to Obama's initiatives have mounted over the summer, pessimism in the nation's direction has risen: Fifty-five percent see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April.Seems to me that these results reflect less on a changing judgment about the president and more on a growing public understanding of what osbtacles lie in the path of real change: Broadly, Congress, and more specifically the conservatives therein. As Ezra points out, there isn't a strong record of even the most ambitious presidents actually succeeding in this kind of reform. Understanding that at least helps explain the disparity between Obama's approval rating, along with growing confidence in the economy, and the wrong-track numbers. I just hope that skittish congressional Democrats are smart enough to understand that these are the nadir poll numbers of a long hot summer of crazy (the results are actually from the end of last week), and that they have the potential to change as the substance of health care reform is brought forward and defended. The negative opinions about reform in this poll result from fear and confusion, and if that leads Democrats to shy away from reform, that will only lead to more of the same public reaction. Only by actually changing something in the status quo do they have any hope of changing their poll numbers.
-- Tim Fernholz
