A BUMPIER ROAD FOR OBAMA? - July 16, 2009

President Obama's political road has grown modestly but perceptibly bumpier in his sixth month in office. His job approval rating, as measured by the composite trend at Pollster.com, has slipped from about 60 percent, where it remained remarkably steady through the spring, to the mid-50s. What most grabbed the attention of the Beltway political class was a single recent state poll, of Ohio, that showed Obama's approval rating there dropping from the low 60s in May to 49 percent, with 44 percent disapproving.

There is no real doubt about the reason: the poor state of the economy. The official national unemployment rate has reached 9.5 percent, considerably worse than Obama's economic team projected at the start of his term. His economic stimulus package, enacted in mid-February, has brought no obvious surge of relief after five months. Indeed, the president had to write an op-ed piece in the New York Times asking for patience, a sure sign that he is beginning to feel some heat. Also by no coincidence, Ohio – a traditionally Republican-leaning state that Obama carried last fall, a major electoral coup for him – has one of the bleakest economic landscapes in the country.

Republicans, not unnaturally, feel emboldened by these developments, though they remain in the political wilderness: The belated conclusion of a close Senate race in Minnesota gives the Democrats 58 senators plus two Democratic-leaning independents, meaning that the 40 remaining Republicans cannot by themselves sustain a Senate filibuster. The GOP has suffered other setbacks as well. Two prominent senators, both regarded as potential 2012 presidential prospects, are mired in sex scandals, while 2008 vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin – also seen as a 2012 prospect – abruptly announced her resignation as governor of Alaska, without coherent explanation.

Trees that fall in the political wilderness do make a sound, but these Republican embarrassments have all been treated (not unreasonably) as entertainment stories without larger significance. Other Republicans are thus left free to criticize Democrats and the Obama Administration. The GOP's very weakness leaves it unburdened by responsibility; it is also unburdened, at least for the moment, by Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, whose high media profiles in the spring gave unintended aid and comfort to Democrats. Republicans do not even have the burden of making cogent arguments about economic policy. The bad economy provides fertile ground for whatever they say, sense or nonsense.

Obama is in large measure a victim of his own success. Six months ago there was a pervasive fear that the world economy was in a graveyard spiral toward a new Great Depression. This fear has evaporated, replaced by worries about stagnation, or a sluggish recovery with persisting high unemployment. In the US, with much less social safety net than most industrialized countries, the resulting pain is intense and widespread, and gratitude at having escaped outright catastrophe is inevitably shortlived.

Yet a job approval rating in the mid-50s is a decline only because Obama's previous ratings were so high. If the honeymoon is over, the marriage is still pretty happy. Moreover, the stimulus package was signed into law in mid-February, not quite five months ago. It should be the least of surprises that its effects are only now beginning to be felt, and so far only minimally. Only late this year will the stimulus be substantially felt, and not in full force until next year. A second stimulus may nevertheless be called for, given the severity of the 'Great Recession' – it may be noted that a good many economists argued for a larger stimulus program than the one enacted. It is too early to say until we have a better sense of the real impact of the first one, but the political prospects of a second stimulus bill will certainly be strengthened if the current stimulus comes to be seen as effective though insufficient, rather than simply ineffectual.

Meanwhile the next major item on Washington's political plate is health insurance reform. The legislative sausage making machine is never pretty to watch, and every week or so a reform measure is said to be stalled in Congress, but the prospects of major reform are guardedly favorable. In the health care debate Republicans are all but relegated to the place of bystanders; the contention is between progressive and conservative Democrats. President Obama would certainly like a 'bipartisan' measure, i.e. one with a handful of GOP supporters, but he is unlikely to get them, and will probably lose a few of the most conservative Democrats. But a provision enacted during the spring, with little fanfare, permits health insurance reform to be brought forward as part of a 'budget reconciliation' process that cannot be filibustered, and thus requires only a simple majority to pass the Senate.

The arithmetic thus favors Obama, even if the calendar does not. Prudent caution would never rule out the chance that the health insurance industry – unpopular, but well-heeled and very well connected – will manufacture a successful campaign, as they did in 1994, to stop a measure that threatens their control of US health care. But for all his recent slippage in the polls, Obama remains much more popular than Bill Clinton was when his health reform plan collapsed, and Congressional Democrats remain a much more disciplined and unified majority than they were in 1994. They are well aware that nothing is surer to turn voters against them than a high-profile failure.

Were Obama's poll ratings to suffer continued and substantial erosion, all of this might come unraveled. Politicians share in full the human weakness for sauve qui peut, even though in politics as in warfare panic is commonly followed by decimation. (As was the fate of Congressional Democrats in 1994). We cannot say what the break point would be, but it surely requires far worse slippage than Obama has suffered so far. He remains a popular president, his net approval (approval rating minus disapproval) still in double digits. Indeed we cannot say yet whether the ground lost since early June is long-term erosion or a transient wave of disgruntlement as the reality of a prolonged and severe recession sinks in. His support has fallen mainly among independents, a group that almost by definition lacks strong political views and is thus subject to short term shifts in mood.

If a health insurance reform bill passes it will almost certainly give Obama, and Democrats, a bump in public support. Health insurance reform, no matter how robust, will not instantly alleviate people's worries about their access to health care, let alone their access to jobs. But nothing succeeds like success. Not the least way that Obama is paying some price for his own early success is that he did so much in his first months in office that he has more recently suffered from a drought of bills to sign. Passage of a health bill will end that drought, produce a wave of favorable media coverage, and particularly impress independents, who tend to dislike the political process but support decisive action.

Thus, if the administration should decide that 'Stimulus II' is called for later this year, Obama may well be in a stronger position than if he sought it now. Passage of a health bill will have reinforced his image of vigorous leadership, and the initial stimulus will have kicked in enough to support a perception that it is 'not enough' rather than 'ineffectual.'

The strongest argument against a second stimulus will of course be the deficit. On the merits this argument is rather weak in the midst of a severe recession, with deflation a greater concern than inflation. Even if the deficit argument were strong on the merits it might seem problematic for Republicans to make it, given that the GOP has been zealous in deficit spending since 1981, and instantly threw away the surplus it inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001. This of course will not stop them. 'Deficits,' in US political culture, have little to do with mere accounting. They are a metaphor, among Republicans for government activism of any sort, and among the broader public for ineffective government and economic malaise in general.

This was underlined by a largely forgotten episode of the 1992 election campaign. During a 'town hall' debate, an audience member asked candidates Bush the elder and Clinton what they intended to do about 'the deficit.' But it was clear from his question that he meant not the deficit as such, but rather the 1991-92 recession. Clinton had the insight to recognize this, and answered accordingly. Obama is also not lacking in political insight, and he and his advisors surely have not forgotten this incident and its lessons. 

To outward appearances the White House is taking a hands-off approach toward a health insurance reform bill – much as it did toward the stimulus package last spring. In spite of his short time in the Senate, much of it absorbed by his presidential campaign, Obama has a shrewd appreciation of Congressional pride and prerogative, and clearly wants to minimize both public cajoling of Congress and visible White House fingerprints on the measure itself. But he is certainly aware of a health bill's importance to his own political health, from the short term – supporting his poll numbers in the face of hard economic times – to the long term consequences for his legacy of either enacting or failing to enact a health insurance measure.

Based on experience to date, there is every reason to suspect that the White House is pushing hard behind the scenes to move a health bill forward … and a good prospect that he will be signing one into law this fall.

Rick Robinson