In the course of two days, President Barack Obama appeared on a slew of network Sunday interview programs and on Late Night With David Letterman — begging the question of whether a network would soon offer him his own daily show (bet it won’t be Fox). And raising the issue among TV-cable talking heads, new media pundits, talk show hosts and bloggers: Is Obama overexposing himself?
A NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds the answer is “NO” and it boils down to this:
If you voted for Barack Obama, you have no problem seeing him and might even want to see more of them.
If you voted against Barack Obama you want to see less of him and think he is overexposed.
Of course the poll doesn’t include the mainstream media — which as part of its job looks for issues or possible issues to discuss. This poll suggests that it’s a possible issue that isn’t.
And the poll doesn’t include conservative talkers or anti-Obama bloggers, who will raise any issue if it seems to be a potentially negative one about Obama, due to their own political prisms (we all have them — even centrists).
But the poll’s findings are quite clear:
Fifty-four percent of people questioned in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey say they’re seeing the right amount of Obama, with 34 percent saying they see and hear too much of the president and 9 percent suggesting they don’t hear enough from the president .
The poll, released Tuesday night, also indicates a partisan divide on the question, with 63 percent of respondents who voted for Republican John McCain in last year’s presidential election saying they’re seeing too much of the president, with only eight percent of people who voted for Obama feeling the same way.
According to the survey, 52 percent of independents believe Obama’s exposure is OK and 40 percent say it’s too much.
But the poll is unlikely to change the minds of those who feel is he overexposed. He is to them (but then he was during the campaign as well).
The key to watch will be the independents, which several polls show Obama as starting to lose. Obama still seems to be someone who wears well with a larger number of Americans, which means they’ll be open to listening to what he says. The danger for Obama: if the people who voted for him start feeling they’ve overdosed on seeing him on TV, on You Tubes, on late night comedy shows or maybe even day on Oprah or Judge Judy (suing the birthers?) he will become background noise.
This poll shows he is not at that stage. Yet.
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.