Did Obama's statement on marriage equality affect his approval ratings?

Um, not really looking like it.

Health care reform and the bully pulpit

Scott Lemieux has a nice review up of George Edwards' new book On Deaf Ears, which it sounds like I'll need to read/assign soon. It's about the basic ineffectiveness of presidential speeches in changing congressional minds, something our pundit class seems to have a hard time wrapping its head around. I particularly like the discussion of Bill Clinton's experience with health care reform.

The particularly striking example, which Edwards spends a lot of time on, is Clinton and health care. Clinton, in short, did everything that armchair critics of Obama assure us would have produced a better bill than the ACA. The administration crafted a plan itself rather than waiting for Congress to act, and using extensively tested strategies made a conscious decision to “go public” and try to indirectly pressure members of Congress to support its bill by making it more popular. Of course, this approach couldn’t have worked out any less well; presidential communication didn’t make Clinton’s proposals any more popular, and Democrats in Congress who had been largely cut out of the loop didn’t have Clinton’s back.... Granted, Clinton’s health care strategy might (or might not) have worked better if he had Obama’s margin in the Senate to work with. But 1)Obama had very good reasons for not wanting to emulate that approach. and 2)there’s than no reason to think it would have produced a better result and 3)there was a very real risk it would have ended up in health care reform failing entirely yet again.

The plummet

Bernstein's right: the New York Times should be ashamed of itself for repeatedly printing the works of Drew Westen. Just to pick up on one of Westen's points:

After his grand bargain on the debt, for example, the president’s approval ratings plummeted.

That's a pretty steep plummet! My ears just popped!

Read Jon's post for more gems, especially the part about no one knowing what Obama truly believes. Ack.

Anatomy of a rally effect

Why did President Obama's approval rating rise in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death? Many political scientists will tell you it's because elite discourse suddenly became very favorable to Obama. Those who usually hear neutral or critical media messages about Obama suddenly heard more positive messages, and their evaluations responded accordingly.

There's some nice evidence from MeaningMine that's consistent with this story. MeaningMine is a software program that analyzes coverage in newspapers and social media. For this project, it examined over 690,000 articles and postings and determined whether the coverage was "healthy" (supportive of Obama) or "unhealthy" (critical of Obama). The trend matches Obama's Gallup approval rating nicely:

Of course, these trends moved simultaneously, so this is hardly proof of causality, but it's certainly consistent with the elite-driven theory. I'd be curious to see how the results break down by media type (MSM, blogs, Facebook, etc.).

(via Edie Lush)

All victory is fleeting

A quick reaction to last night's historic announcement that U.S. forces have killed Osama bin Laden. First of all, woot. Seriously, this is pretty huge. I can't remember the last time thousands of young people gathered in front of the White House in support of the actions of its occupant. Major, major props to all those involved.

Second (not to get all political, but that's what I do), how big a bump for Obama? Bouie says his approval ratings will go over 50, Bernstein says around 60... I'll split the difference and go with 55. But I think it important to recognize that this will be a temporary bump -- a month at most. This is a big story, and the president is rightly receiving accolades from political elites on both sides of the aisle, which is what creates a bounce. But it's not the only story out there, and eventually Republicans will find reasons to criticize him again.

Third, does this assure Obama's reelection? Hardly. Keep in mind that this is occurring at roughly the same point in Obama's presidency as the Gulf War victory occurred in George H.W. Bush's. Maybe it will scare off one or two of Obama's challengers, but it really shouldn't. Economic growth over the next year or so, rather than military victories, will determine whether Obama is another Reagan or another Bush 41.

Oh, and by the way, add killing bin Laden to the list of things President Clinton attempted and Obama achieved.

Garbage in; garbage out

Ian McDonald catches Rasmussen conducting a ridiculous poll and getting ridiculous results. That would be a poll about the performance of President Obama's cabinet officers. Here are the results for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 27% view the former Colorado senator unfavorably, including 11% with a Very Unfavorable view of him. But like many of his fellow Cabinet members, Salazar is an unknown commodity to many voters: 57% don't know enough about him to venture any kind of opinion.

Unless my math skills are really rusty, that would mean that 43% of Americans know enough about Ken Salazar to venture an opinion about him. Sorry, but I've got to call bullshit on that one. I'd be impressed if five percent of Americans knew that Ken Salazar was the Interior Secretary. Knowing the identity of lower-tier cabinet officers, no less forming opinions about them, is just not something that the vast majority of Americans preoccupy themselves with.

I have no idea if Salazar is secure in his position or not. But if he's not, it has nothing to do with the masses rising up against him.

(h/t Michael Tofias)

Misunderstanding Obama's rise

Yes, polls are showing a rise in Obama's approval rating of late -- a CNN poll has him as high as 55%, although the average is around 50 right now.  So why is this happening?  The Hill has an interesting spin:

The rebound comes as Obama has made a point of pivoting toward the center, and making more overtures toward Republicans in Congress.

Note how they never specifically say that Obama's pivot is causing the rise in approval ratings. Clever. Although they clearly imply it. Colorado Pols has another take:

We'd say this thaw in Obama's approval numbers has as much to do with hyperbole fatigue as anything else--after two years, Americans are finally realizing that Obama isn't actually Hitler, Stalin, Castro, and Osama all rolled into one. Tom Tancredo's Nazis-and-nuclear-war comparison is a perfect example of what we mean--the stuff just gets ridiculous after awhile, and people stop listening to you. 

Okay, a few quick points. Obama making overtures toward Republicans is not likely to affect a whole lot of voters. After all, he made plenty of overtures to them during the health care debate, and that didn't do much for his approval ratings. Also, I really doubt "hyperbole fatigue" is having any effect here. I feel safe in saying that anyone who was calling Obama a socialist or Hitler a year ago is still disapproving of his performance today.

The most likely explanation for Obama's rise in recent polls is that the economy is actually improving. There is also quite possibly a post-Tucson shooting rally effect going on, although much of the movement seems to predate that. We'll know more in the weeks and months to come as we see whether this is a temporary bump or a sustained resurgence.

Why are Dems losing their advantage among Latinos?

Ezra Klein posts this Gallup graphic showing net Democratic approval among black, Latino, and white voters:

Whites and blacks have been pretty stable in their feelings towards the Democrats this year.  But can someone explain to me why Latino support for Democrats is plummeting during a year when Republicans have been falling all over themselves to back Arizona-style crackdown laws?  I don't get it. Gallup's explanation, that Latinos are upset with the Democrats for not passing immigration reform, doesn't quite ring true to me.  The passage of the Arizona initiative just has to be a higher salience change than the national government's failure to act.

Seeing through party lenses

My old colleague Tom Knecht notes some recent public opinion data on the war in Afghanistan in his paper "Benchmarks in Foreign Policy Opinion," which he recently presented at the Midwest Political Science Association.  My favorite figure:

Basically, asking someone their evaluation of the war in Afghanistan is tantamount to asking them their party identification.  If you're of the same party as the president, you're okay with it.  If not, you're not.  Of course, it isn't a perfect mirror -- Republican support for the war under Bush was more than ten points higher than it is among Democrats under Obama.  This, however, is surely reflective of the substantial chunk of the Democratic electorate that is fundamentally anti-war no matter who the president is, and not an evaluation of the president's actual prosecution of the war.