The Obama White House is learning the limits of communications.
According to Rasmussen, the President’s approval rating have shrunk to about where they were on Election Day: 52 percent favorable, 47 percent unfavorable. The difference between Mr. Obama’s highly favorable number and highly unfavorable is now negative seven percent. Looking at the charts of public opinion survey results, it appears that the President went into a steep slide about when he started to make health care reform his top issue.
The President’s campaign for reform has been impressive, what with eloquent presidential speeches, town hall meetings that featured moving (if pre-arranged) stories from effective (if pre-approved) citizens, and ABC News devoting a prime time segment in support of the White House. I am in Ohio today, and ads supporting the President’s initiative are all over the TV.
Yet again according Rasmussen (which was rated the most accurate national pollster after both the 2004 and 2008 elections), half the country now opposes the program’s centerpiece, the public option. Meanwhile, today’s Wall Street Journal lead front-page headline announced even more bad news about the reform proposals and the budget. What was the estimated cost? As of a few weeks ago, north of $1 trillion. But, today’s Journal reports that the Congressional Budget Office has just found that the proposals on the table would make health cost inflation worse, exactly the opposite of what advocates including the President have maintained. Perhaps worst of all, polls are showing fast fading public interest in the issue generally.
My point is that the public appears not to be responding to the tsunami of White House communications. It may, in fact, be souring on the President himself as a result of the campaign.
We’ve heard a lot about past health care overhaul failures. There are some ideas that even the most skilled communicators can take to the American people and come up with no sale. As things look today, anything that smacks of a major shaking up of how Americans receive their health care could contend for top place on that list.
