LOOKING FORWARD….In a way, I’m not surprised that Barack Obama’s popularity has remained strong. He’s a charismatic guy in the first place, he’s handled the transition with very little rancor and an apparently sincere dedication to working across the aisle, and people are naturally hopeful about a new guy coming to office when times are bad.
Still, it’s pretty eye-opening that optimism is running as far ahead of past precedent as this New York Times poll shows. Tellingly, though, people are considerably more optimistic about Obama’s ability to fix the economy and withdraw from Iraq than they are about his ability to fix the healthcare system. Only a bare majority thinks he’ll make any serious progress at all on healthcare in his first term. I hope the American public turns out to be less than prescient in that regard.
