The Note: Drag & Pull -- Agenda Lags Behind Obama’s Popularity

June 23, 2009 8:14 AM

By RICK KLEIN

If there’s a way to get a fresh start, President Obama will find it over these next two days.

If not, well, never mind. (And at least the governor of South Carolina has been found.)

With a news conference Tuesday at 12:30 pm ET (out of primetime), and a health care forum Wednesday evening on ABC (back in primetime), the president gets to make his case with what remains the most solid brand in American politics today: himself.

That brand retains impressive approval ratings -- 65 percent in the new ABC News/Washington Post poll.

But it remains what he wants to do with those numbers that promises difficulties.

From the start, the public hasn’t been behind his policies so much as it’s been behind him. And the president gets further out in front with every new detail that emerges in a health care plan that isn’t really a fully formed plan.

(And look what was back Monday: “Yes, we can,” the president said Monday morning, per ABC’s Jake Tapper.) 

(“The slogan really didn’t have the same oomph this week, in the stodgy old Diplomatic Reception Room,” Tapper reported on “Good Morning America” Tuesday.)

The underpinnings of Obama’s presidency -- and his argument for getting Congress to move his way -- has been found in the numbers all along: Since Obama’s election, a key piece of his political currency has been that confidence has been on an upward swing; right track finally beat wrong track in April.

Now, wrong track is back on top -- and with a slow erosion of support on key issues, the climb in optimism about the nation’s course is no longer.

“President Obama remains on his honeymoon -- but with a hint of clouds over the beach,” ABC Polling Director Gary Langer writes. “A still-impressive 65 percent of Americans in this new ABC News/Washington Post poll approve of Obama's job performance. But there's been a retrenchment in the expectation that his stimulus plan will improve the economy -- and, consequently, a halt in what had been steadily improving views of the nation's direction.” 

Those stubborn gaps: “The president's overall approval remains higher than his rating for handling any specific issue, and there are several on which he's notably vulnerable. He's below 50 percent approval for handling the federal deficit and the automaker bailout alike. His positions on Guantanamo Bay and torture continue to lack majority support. And he has a fairly tepid 53 percent approval on health care, a longtime political sand trap on which the administration is making a major push this summer,” Langer writes.

“With unemployment projected to continue rising and fears that the big run-up in stock prices since February may have been a temporary trend, fixing the economy remains the most critical issue of Obama's presidency -- and retaining public confidence in his policies is an important element of his recovery strategy,” the Post’s Dan Balz and Jon Cohen write. 

“Public confidence in the direction of the country remains well above pre-election lows, but in the new survey, that indicator stopped rising for the first time since the election. . . . More broadly, worries about the deficit remain widespread, with almost nine in 10 Americans saying they are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ concerned about its size.”

“Fifty-two percent of respondents say the stimulus either has helped or will help the economy, down from 59 percent two months ago,” per ABC News. “That’s not a huge shift. But it’s not the right direction for the President Obama, given that more money from the stimulus is going out every day.” 

Watching the indies: “While the president remains broadly popular, his standing has eroded noticeably among political independents in recent weeks,” Gerald Seib writes in his Wall Street Journal column. “That slide, among a set of citizens central to Mr. Obama's sizable victory in last year's election, means he has reached a politically hazardous juncture at the midpoint of his first, exceptionally hectic year.” 

The ebb and flow, flowing: “According to the neverending political momentum game in Washington, Obama needs to re-seize the initiative,” Andrew Malcolm blogs for the Los Angeles Times. “Obama wants to play offense.” 

Another end of the push: “I think what people are seeing is that the country has moved to another point in time,” First Lady Michelle Obama tells ABC’s Robin Roberts, on “Good Morning America” Tuesday.

“More and more people are ready for this kind of reform,” she said. “There are going to be tough choices that have to be made, and no system is going to be perfect, which is why my side of the equation, the wellness side, is to me one of the true keys of changing the health paradigm in this country.”

“If we are healthier people, then we won't need the health care system that we think will put us in a position that is unrealistic. You know, we're in charge of our own health, ultimately.”

(Sasha likes peas; Malia favors broccoli.)

Some GOP pre-buttal to the president’s news conference, from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.: “The American people don’t want us to spend trillions of dollars we don’t have on a health care system they don’t want,” McConnell plans to say on the Senate floor Tuesday morning, per excerpts released by his office.

“And yet that’s exactly what Democrats plan to do, even though they can't explain to anyone how they will pay for it. Despite the staggering costs of the Democrat health care plan, we’re being told we need to rush it through the Congress for the sake of the economy. When Republicans ask how Democrats are going to pay for it, or what impact it will have on our health care system and the economy, the only words we hear are rush and spend, rush and spend,” McConnell will say.

New social networking tools will be in use during the 12:30 pm ET press conference -- including a chance to follow along and react via Facebook. 

President Obama sits down with ABC’s Diane Sawyer on Tuesday -- look for the interview on Wednesday’s “Good Morning America.”

On these voluntary agreements -- hard to count the savings: “The White House on Monday hailed what it described as a ‘historic agreement to lower drugs costs’ for older Americans, but it was not immediately clear how much the government would reap in savings that could be used to pay for coverage of the uninsured,” The New York Times’ Robert Pear writes. “Drug company lobbyists and Senate aides said that none of these savings would accrue to the government, which has no liability for a patient’s drug costs in the coverage gap.” 

Self-interest: “For the drug industry, its $80 billion investment could help advance the fledgling health care overhaul,” USA Today’s Richard Wolf reports. “If it passes, many of the 46 million people now without insurance could become new customers. If Congress doesn't pass a health care bill, seniors won't get the relief, says Ken Johnson of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.” 

Looking in other boxes? “Now you might think that in these circumstances someone might take a second look at the ideas incorporated in the Wyden-Bennett plan, which already has a good C.B.O. score, bipartisan support and a recipe for fundamental reform,” New York Times columnist David Brooks writes. “If you did think that, you are mistaking the Senate for a rational organism. For while there are brewing efforts to incorporate a few Wyden-Bennett ideas, there is stiff resistance to the aspects that fundamentally change incentives.” 

Looking for GOP votes: “The most critical thing is to enact health care reform for everybody that has quality and is affordable,”Ralph G. Neas, CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care, said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” Monday. “But, it would be sad, it would be tragic if it's not bipartisan.” 

Keeping the momentum: “The week will be capped Thursday by two massive efforts by Obama allies,” Roll Call’s Keith Koffler and David M. Drucker report. “In Washington, D.C., Health Care for America Now, an organization backed by unions like the AFL-CIO and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and activist groups like MoveOn and the Campaign for America’s Future, will hold what organizers say will be a massive rally on Capitol Hill demanding a public insurance option.” 

More momentum: Organizing for America is launching its “health care stories tool” Tuesday. The opponents have Canadian stories, and now the DNC is personalizing the president’s case. 

Per a Democratic official, this “also represents an effort to tap into our list using innovative technological tools like the campaign. To date several hundred thousand stories have been cataloged.”

Iran pressure: “Iran's post-election tumult has exposed the sharply divergent ways in which the Obama administration and its Republican opponents view the nature of American power and the president's role in speaking to political dissent outside the borders of the United States,” Scott Wilson writes in The Washington Post. “Obama's shades-of-gray approach rejects comparison to an era when Communist bloc dissidents had virtually no access to the Western media and the world was more neatly divided between a pair of superpowers, not complicated by the set of ambitious regional powers such as Iran that the Obama administration is seeking to manage.” 

Jonah Goldberg, in his Los Angeles Times column: “If the forces of reform and democracy win, Obama's plan to negotiate with the regime is moot, for the regime will be gone. And if the forces of reform are crushed into submission by the regime, Obama's plan is moot, because the regime will still be there. . . . All that's left for Obama now is to abandon his own ideological rigidity and start over.” 

The counter, from Richard Cohen, in his Washington Post column: “The student in him knows that the worst thing the United States could do at the moment is provide the supreme leader and the less supreme leaders with the words to paint the opposition as American stooges -- or, even worse, suggest to the protesters that some sort of help is on its way from Washington.” 

Watching the priorities in Congress: “Democrats are largely ignoring President Obama’s $19.8 billion in budget cuts,” Walter Alarkon writes for The Hill. “The president proposed axing dozens of programs that he said were inefficient or ineffective, but members of the House Appropriations Committee are including the money for them. They are looking to cut elsewhere — and are targeting even some of Obama’s priorities.” 

Quieting a storm: “As advocates for gays and lesbians intensify their criticism of the White House, President Obama has invited some of their leaders to an East Room reception next Monday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, the 1969 Greenwich Village demonstrations that gave birth to the modern gay rights movement,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg reports in The New York Times. “The White House has not publicized the reception, and officials did not respond to e-mail requests for comment. But gay leaders from here and around the country said they had received either telephone calls from the White House or written invitations to the event, and were told Mr. Obama is expected to speak.”

Pressing an advantage (or not): “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will roll the dice on a top priority this week, bringing a contentious climate-change bill to the floor despite strong misgivings from her rank-and-file and an outspoken chairman who remains a major impediment,” Politico’s Patrick O’Connor reports. “The speaker filed the legislation with the Rules Committee on Monday night, her spokesman said, even though its authors, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey, are still working out a deal with Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson.” 

On your Tuesday slate: Vice President Joe Biden travels to Perrysburg, Ohio, to announce the creation of the White House Council on Automotive Communities and Workers.

Also Tuesday -- keeping the drumbeat alive for Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., teams up with police officers from Texas, Nebraska, Florida, and New Jersey -- and the head of the Hispanic National Bar Association -- to show support for Sotomayor at an 11 am ET news conference on Capitol Hill. Per an official: “This will be the first time two central groups behind Judge Sotomayor’s nomination -- Hispanics and law enforcement officials -- are coming together.”

What does the president want the hearings to expose? “A conversation about affirmative action carries political risks for Obama, including potentially alienating some white supporters,” The Boston Globe’s Peter Canellos writes. “And his own administration’s handling of the Sotomayor nomination has been at least partly to blame for the intensive focus on special preferences.” 

As for Gov. Mark Sanford, R-S.C. -- the Don Draper act doesn’t help a presidential resume.

The episode has the identifying characteristics of a political hit on a governor who’s made more than his share of new enemies in recent months -- but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to leave a mark on a 2012 resume.

Sanford’s quirkiness is one of his compelling political traits. But having his wife say she didn’t know where he is? (And where were the governor’s political folks to snuff this story out before it became a national conflagration?)

“S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford’s staff said late Monday that the governor is hiking on the Appalachian Trail, ending four days during which staff and state officials said they had not heard from him,” The State’s John O’Connor and Clif LeBlanc write (under a classic headline): “Sanford taking a hike.” 

“Neither Sanford’s office nor the State Law Enforcement Division, which provides security for governors, had been able to reach Sanford since he left the mansion Thursday in a black Suburban SUV assigned to his security detail, said state Sen. Jake Knotts , R-Lexington, and three others familiar with the situation, but who declined to be identified,” they write. “Joel Sawyer, the governor’s spokesman would not disclose where on the trail the governor was hiking, nor would he reveal whether Sanford was hiking alone.”

Is that the end? “South Carolina’s lieutenant governor said Monday night that neither he nor Gov. Mark Sanford’s staff know where the governor is and that Sanford’s office refused his demand to talk his fellow Republican,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin reports. “Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer . . . said he called Sanford’s office Monday and requested an ‘immediate phone conversation with the Governor.’ ” 

Said Bauer: “That request was denied because the Governor’s chief of staff does not know where the Governor is, and has not communicated with the Governor since he left South Carolina last Thursday. . . . I cannot take lightly that his staff has not had communication with him for more than four days, and that no one, including his own family, knows his whereabouts.”

Your Tuesday lunch conversation on the Hill: “Sen. John Ensign (Nev.) is expected to address his GOP colleagues at their weekly luncheon today to try to turn the page on the high-profile sex scandal that has derailed his rising political career,” Roll Call’s John Stanton and Jessica Brady report.

The Kicker:

“He calls, drops a few F-bombs, makes his point and hangs up.” -- Paul Begala, describing a typical conversation with Rahm Emanuel, to The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz. 

“I don't honestly see the need to get a whole lot more specific than the fact that it's a continuing struggle.” -- White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, on whether President Obama still smokes. 

Today on “Top Line,” ABCNews.com’s daily political Webcast: Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas; and GOP strategist Kevin Madden. Noon ET.

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