A new CBS News poll finds that when it comes to President Barack Obama’s handling of the AIG bonuses controversy if the bloom is not off the rose then one of the blooms has started to seriously wilt: a large number of Americans give him poor marks on his handling of the issue:
For the first time since he became president, a significant number of Americans are expressing disapproval of Barack Obama’s actions in a specific area: His handling of the AIG bonus situation.
Despite the middling reviews for his handling of the bonuses, however, the president continues to get high marks overall for his job performance and his handling of the economy.
Forty-two percent of those surveyed disapprove of the president’s handling of the AIG bonuses, while roughly the same percentage – 41 percent – approve. Another 17 percent don’t know or aren’t sure.
If you split the difference on the I-don’t-knows and I’m-not-sures it still means that slightly more Ameicans think he handled it poorly than well. This should provide a warning signal to Obama since the AIG brou-ha-ha conjures up images of buddy-buddy Washington and Wall Street insiders watching each others backs and padding each others’ pockets out of a sense of entitlement. His campaign premise was that he represented a new way of governing. The good news for him is this: 1. This comes early in his term. 2. He did fine in the rest of the poll:
Yet President Obama’s overall job performance rating appears unaffected by the AIG fallout. Sixty-four percent approve of the president’s performance, roughly the same as last week.
And ratings for the president’s handling of the overall economy are actually up slightly: Sixty-one percent now approve, up from 56 percent last week.
The poll numbers can be explained in part by the fact that most Americans do not think there was much the Obama administration could have done about the bonuses. Only 12 percent think the administration had a lot of control over the payouts, while more than half say the administration had little or no control.
Even so, 56 percent of Americans say the administration ought to have found some way to stop the bonuses from being paid out. Thirty-four percent said it should not have.
Now the question is: does Obama learn from his political toe stubbing or make the same msitake over again on another issue?
But he has another concern: the issue could get out of control and torpedo the support he needs for the rest of his plan. And there has been a shift in his rhetoric:
President Barack Obama raced to the front of the pitchfork crowd last week, feeding public furor over bonuses paid to publicly rescued companies.
But now, amid signs that rescinding the bonuses might undermine his financial-sector bailout plan, the president is waving an olive branch.
Obama’s tone changed dramatically over the weekend, after the House voted for targeted taxes to take back most of the $165 million in bonuses paid to executives of the largely nationalized insurance giant American International Group. Many lawmakers felt Obama had encouraged their step, because he called the bonuses reckless, outrageous and unjustified.
In the White House, however, the situation seemed to be spinning out of control. Some fellow Democrats questioned the constitutionality and wisdom of the harsh reaction.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.