The Los Angeles Times quotes Neil Newhouse in an article about Chrysler filing for bankruptcy.
The White House’s deep involvement in the Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings means Obama will be blamed if it turns out badly by hurting union members and retirees, said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster.
“After 100 days in office, this is another sign that he is taking ownership of the nation’s economy,” he said.
Neil was quoted again by Chris Cillizza in The Fix in reference to the results of the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that shows that Obama himself is more popular than his policies.
On the one hand, more than eight in ten Americans feel warmly toward Obama, suggesting he has a deep reservoir of personal likability and will continue to tap it in order to sell his agenda to the country.
On the other, the fact that three in ten like Obama but dislike his policies could well portend a much more difficult political environment for the president over the next 100 days than he dealt with in the first 100 days.
How big an issue is the chasm between Obama’s personal favorability and the approval of his policies?
“It poses a significant challenge for Obama to turn the ‘hope’ voters have for his success into ‘results,'” explained Republican pollster Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies. “The more stark the gap between those two, the more his programs are at risk.”
Steve Kinney also comments on the poll’s results in Peter Roff’s blog on the U.S. News and World Report site.
America also continues to embrace Obama. According to a recent survey by Public Opinion Strategies, a GOP firm, “an amazing 79 percent of the voters we talked to told us they liked President Obama as a person.” His agenda, however, is less popular.
“Just fifty-five percent of Americans say they like President Obama’s policies,” says POS’s Steve Kinney. “This is still a solid majority, but the economic conditions in this country are still not improving, and these numbers show that Obama’s charismatic personality can only carry him so far.”
