HE'LL BE FINE...:

President Obama's poll numbers start to wilt (MICHAEL FALCONE & ANDY BARR, 6/22/09, Politico)

[T]he trend lines among a variety of polls over the past several days are unmistakable: Independents and even some Republicans who once viewed him sympathetically are becoming skeptical, and many people of all stripes are anxious about economic and fiscal trends.

Obama’s approval rating has dipped below 60 percent on other occasions according to Gallup, but while those slumps lasted only a day, this one appears to be more persistent.

So is the intensity of partisan reaction to Obama, who ran on the promise of softening ideological divisions and unifying Americans. On Sunday, a Rasmussen Reports tracking poll found that 32 percent of Americans strongly approved of the president while 32 percent strongly disapproved.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center, said the Obama administration should look at the results of the center's recent poll and others “as a warning sign” but added that the new numbers were “not an indication of a loss of fundamental political support.”

“The real driver is not the president’s personal popularity,” which remains robust, Kohut said, “but faith in him to deal with the nation’s number one problem” — i.e, the economy.

...as long as Cap & Trade and Health Care fail and he doesn't ruin the economy himself.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2009 4:53 PM