Forty-seven percent (47%) of U.S. voters rate President Obama’s handling of the health care issue as poor, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Only 32% say the president has done a good or excellent job on the issue that has increasingly come to dominate the national political debate as the plan proposed by Obama and congressional Democrats struggles through Congress.
It’s a bit hard to fathom that 32 percent of voters think he’s done a good job on health care. Who are these people? They can’t be liberals, who think the president has fumbled the ball. They wouldn’t be conservatives, who believe Obama’s demagoguery and statist leanings have led Congress into a legislative cul-de-sac. And certainly independents who voted overwhelmingly for Scott Brown and who are fleeing the Democratic party nationally don’t like what Obama’s done.
Really, it’s hard to imagine how Obama could have done a worse job on a legislative goal that he described as his key domestic initiative and that liberals have dreamed of achieving for decades. After all, Obama had huge congressional majorities. How did his miss a golden opportunity like this to alter the entire landscape of domestic policy and establish a place for nationalized health care? Well, for starters, he delegated the job to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, who proceeded to craft a bill that appealed to the Left but not to the vast middle of the electorate. Then Obama imagined that this was something the public actually wanted, when they’d rather get unemployment below 10 percent and not explode the deficit. Next he stood idly by as the bill became progressively worse, corrupted by backroom deals. Then his much heralded rhetorical skills failed him. (Turns out that repeating pabulum on five Sunday talk shows doesn’t carry the day.)
As a result, Obama is scrambling for Plan B, his presidency hanging in the balance. Maybe he can find some face-saving mini-health-care reforms to pass, get his signing ceremony, and declare “victory.” But pundits who thought he possessed great finesse and liberals who saw him as their political savior must be gravely disappointed. And conservatives? They’re breathing a sigh of relief that the American people have reasserted themselves and that a big-government power grab is on the verge of collapse.
