The First Test of the Obama Presidency?

Obama is currently riding a 71% approval rating according to Gallup and a 67% approval rating according to Rasmussen. Nate posits he may come in to the Presidency with the highest approval rating since Kennedy. We also have learned in the past few weeks that Obama has set a goal of having a stimulus plan ready to sign when he steps through the door to the Oval Office on the first day. That stimulus plan, the outline of which was revealed in last week's installment of the YouTube fireside chat, would be a massive spending program that would stress infrastructure projects. Which is why, although not scientific by any stretch of the imagination, this CNN flash poll is a little troubling:


If this is at all representative of the true national public opinion, the stimulus plan Obama outlined could prove to be much tougher to pass than I had originally thought. Together, 60% of the public would either like a check for themselves or no spending at all. That's a problem. The 34% that want a check no doubt like free money. Who doesn't? But the problem is that these immediate tax cuts, gratifying as they are to us all, won't stimulate the economy by any measure close to what we need to get out of our deep funk. Most people will use this money to save or to pay down their debt as they did with the checks from earlier in the year, all good things to be doing from a personal standpoint, but neither of which grows the economy.

It may be no coincidence that the same percentage of people that want the government NOT to spend any more money, is also roughly equal to the percentage of people that still approve of the job George W. Bush is doing. These people cannot be reached. It saddens me that a quarter of the American population is at least one-half ostrich. But if Obama wants that infrastructure spending package, which has been rumored to perhaps exceed $1 trillion in spending, ready to sign day one, the Dems are going to need an effective PR campaign as to why this is the right way to (literally) dig ourselves out of the economic crisis. The PR mess of explaining the $700 billion TARP bailout, should not be a model to follow. (The first mistake there was letting it be called a "bailout", rather than a "rescue plan", something George Lakoff and Frank Luntz could have easily told them). Not that that the TARP plan wasn't a stupid idea to begin with. But it was a stupid idea and a bad PR campaign, the only thing that got it passed was the old GOP trick of conjuring up images of Armageddon, in this case financial Armageddon, and push the public over the cliff.

This is where it seems infeasible for this plan to be ready at the absolute beginning of the Obama administration. I just have no faith in the congressional Democratic leadership to be able to come up with an effective way to clearly articulate the rationale of why this plan works and get the public behind it within a 39 days. Whereas, Obama being the great communicator that he is, does have my confidence in being able to explain this plan and get everyone on board. But right now he's somehwat handcuffed in how he can go about communicating that, given that he's not yet officially President.

And lastly, I voted in the poll. I voted for mass transit. If we can't get high-speed city-to-city rail now, then it's just never going to happen.