At 12:01 p.m., EST, Obama’s approval rating will begin to decline

January 20th, 2009 at 12:51am Chuck Sweeny

Polls say that Barack Obama’s approval rating is 83 percent. What? He’s not even inaugurated yet. Starting at noon today, his popularity will begin to diminish, because he will start making real decisions.

Obama is expected to issue a flurry of executive orders, dictating the very slow closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, ordering abortion options included in U.S. aid to birth control grants to poor countries, allowing openly homosexual and lesbian people to serve in the military and reversing anti-environmental orders signed by the outgoing Bush administration.

All those things will bring his approval rating down to the low 60s,  still fairly high. He will also name retired senator George Mitchel to be his special envoy to the Middle East and will begin to tilt our foreign policy back from supporting Israel at all costs, to an even-handed approach to the various  Middle  East crises. It’s no accident to me that Israel is pulling out of Gaza and signing a cease fire with Hamas in the final hours of the Bush administration. Israel might no longer have have carte blanche approval from the U.S. to ruthlessly bomb its neighbors.

But it’s the economy that most people expect Obama to put right, a tall, tall order. Looking at the version of his stimulus plan that emerged from a House committee, I fail to see how it’s going to protect or create 2, 3 or 4 million jobs. It’s mostly money that will go to existing entities. What we all thought was going to be a massive public works bill turns out to be just $30 billion for roads, $10 billion for mass transit and $1.1 billion for intercity rail.

Big deal? Not so much. If in 6 months the economy continues to slide, his approval rating goes into the 50s. In a year, if things aren’t getting better, he’s in the 40s, and then if he’s not careful, Obama will join the Bush leagues.

Obama will seriously hurt his relations with business groups if he pushes a “card check” bill that unions expect him to pass in order to make it easier for unions to organize chapters without secret ballot elections. However, he’ll offset that, but only partially,  by improving his standing with unions.

Obama will get similarly mixed reactions by promoting the equal pay for equal work bill that feminist groups expect to be passed. It sounds good in theory, but who’s to decide what’s an equal job? Is unloading plywood from a train car equal to entering data into a computer? Beats the heck out of me. You?

If Obama hasn’t delivered the goods on the economy in 2010 he very well could lose Democratic majorities in Congress. To those of you who think the Republicans are dead as door nails, I have one thing to say: 1994.

Shut out of majority status for  40 years, the GOP came storming back that year to take both houses of Congress. Bill Clinton, elected in 1992, faltered miserably during his first two years in office, with his goofy don’t ask don’t tell policy for gays in the military policy, and with his wife Hillary’s draconian health plan that never made it out of what was supposed to be a friendly Congress. Voters decided to hire the Republicans instead. They passed welfare reform, which Clinton signed and promptly took credit for after vetoing similar legislation twice.

The American people have given a tremendous victory to Barack Obama, just as they did to Bill Clinton. The latter squandered his political capital. Let’s hope Obama learned from Bill’s mistakes.

And  that’s  the view of a skeptical reporter who’s been covering politics since 1972.

Entry Filed under: inauguration