Yes, it's just pathetic. The honeymoon is over, he's blown it, the liberal resurgence is dead, etc. etc. Right? Huh. Maybe not:
"Early stumbles by the Obama White House over some high-level appointments caused a firestorm in the Capitol and on cable TV this week, but most Americans dismiss them as just a normal part of staffing a new administration," USA TODAY Washington bureau chief Susan Page reports.
By a nearly 3-1 margin, she says, the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows "confidence in President Obama's ethical standards and his ability to manage the government and improve the economy has gone up rather than down since his inauguration last month."
The survey of 1,012 adults, reached on land lines and cellphones, was done on Wednesday -- the day after Tom Daschle withdrew his name from nomination for the post of Health and Human Services secretary. The results each have a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.
The survey also shows that public opinion of the economic stimulus package working its way through Congress has not changed: 52% favor it; 38% oppose it. In late January, the figures were 52% and 37%. (The others had no opinion.)
Oh well, those fickle Americans. Whaddya expect? The cable-television experts know far better.
Seriously though, here is one problem, flagged in the Wash Post today:
In Congress, many lawmakers say calls from their constituents are running wildly against spending so much money to stimulate the economy, despite the president's full-throated endorsements.
The phone-call ratio is obviously not reflective of public opinion as a whole. It's reflective of which side's army is being enlisted to pick up the phone. Still, every politician knows that legislators use these phone-call ratios as one barometer by which they measure the various pressures on them.
So this raises the question, why aren't rank-and-liberals calling and urging passage? I think the answer is that most liberals who are that engaged are probably members of specific interest groups -- teachers, environmentalists, what have you -- that are probably unhappy with the size of their little slice of the pie. They want stimulus in general, but they want spending in their specific areas, so they're putting their energies into much more particular efforts.
There are a million different ways to support a big spending bill, each group with an eye toward its pet projects. But there's only one way, basically, to oppose it. So the opposition looks more united. But the point is the Beltway conventional wisdom is wrong, as usual.
