A new Gallup Poll finds Americans like President Barack Obama so much that he’s ahead of Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George W. Bush at similar points in their first year in office — but many Americans don’t like his deficit spending:’
While 67% of Americans view President Barack Obama favorably, his overall job approval rating and his ratings on specific areas are less positive. At the low end of the spectrum, only 45% of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of federal spending, and 46% of his handling of the federal budget deficit.
This poll indicates an opening for Republicans, if they can get beyond being a party defined by talk show radio hosts that commuicates in the slash-and-burn style of the talk radio political culture:
Gallup further notes that Obama’s “favorable rating has dropped, but his positive still outweighs his negative rating by better than a 2-to-1 ratio.”
This puts him slightly higher than Bush who was atg 62% at this point and higher than Clinton, who was at 48%.
And he gets a higher rating as a person than he does when you look at how he’s graded on specific issues:
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.