The polling for President Barack Obama is continuing its southward course — this time going into truly dangerous political territory: a majority feel he’s not honest or trustworthy:
A growing number of Americans doubt President Barack Obama’s ability to manage the nation, according to a CNN/ORC poll released on Monday that reflects the possible larger impact of his administration’s fumbled rollout of its healthcare law.
The poll also found that 53 percent of those polled said Obama is not honest or trustworthy, marking the first time that the CNN/ORC polling found a clear majority questioning the president’s integrity, CNN said.
It’s very hard for second term Presidents to recover as their polls go down — and this is an area in which it is particularly hard to recover.
Even worse:
Forty percent of the 843 U.S. adults surveyed in the telephone poll early last week said Obama can manage the government effectively, down 12 percentage points from June….
The pollsters said the survey, conducted by ORC International with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, recorded the worst scores for Obama during his five years in office in key categories.
More bad news:
It found that 56 percent of respondents said they did not admire Obama, disagreed with him on important issues and said he does not inspire confidence, while 53 percent said they do not see him as a strong and decisive leader, CNN said.
And a bit of good news, but it won’t trump (excuse the expression) the bad news:
But the poll also found that the majority of those surveyed said the president still has a vision for the country’s future and cares about average people. Seventy percent said he is likable.
It’s often said that a single polls is not the issue. It’s the patter of polls — plural. And the pattern at this point is not good for Mr. Obama.
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.