With his domestic agenda in peril, unemployment expected to rise and a new poll showing fewer Americans think he’s good in a crisis, President Barack Obama is heading to Ghana.
Promoting African democracy is the final stop in a weeklong overseas trip that so far has produced limited results and focused the president away from his own top priorities.
“He’s kept in regular contact,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters as Obama prepared to wrap up a world leaders conference in Italy. “He has talked fairly regularly with staff back at the White House.”
Even so, a new CNN/Opinion Research poll found a 9 percentage point drop among Americans who say Obama is tough enough to handle a crisis, from 73 percent in February to 64 percent in June.
The poll also found 53 percent believe he has a clear plan for solving the nation’s problems, down 11 percentage points since February.
Unemployment, which the White House predicts will reach 10 percent soon, is an ongoing crisis that so far hasn’t responded to Obama’s accelerated federal stimulus spending.
Recent international crises in Iran and Honduras drew little direct involvement from the administration, which now must contend with politically dicey outcomes in both instances.
“The administration has really shown an inability to consistently emphasize the most important issue at the most important time,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist. “Right now he’s on a trip, he doesn’t seem to be getting much out of it, meanwhile the things everyone is worried about most are the economy and jobs.”
Factor in other polls showing Obama losing the support of independents, especially in key electoral states, and the administration is facing real challenge, said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida.
“When the president’s attention is not focused on most peoples’ number one problem, they get antsy,” MacManus said. “Democrats have to be worried about this — it’s not a crisis yet, but we are looking at some trends here. You can make a corrective action early on to address it, and Obama has an opportunity to do that.”
In Congress, meanwhile, Obama priorities for health care reform and energy legislation were facing new setbacks.
The Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee Thursday delayed action on Obama’s energy bill until September, and health care reform was getting bogged down amid competing proposals, industry concerns and disputes among lawmakers.
Democratic strategist Keir Murray said Obama’s numbers may be dropping, but Republicans are still not gaining much traction against him.
“This is all about unemployment,” Murray said. “People are seeing a lot of activity and debate, but nothing is fundamentally changing.”
Republicans are working to undercut public confidence in the administration while Obama is away, stepping up criticism of the $787 billion stimulus bill the president signed in February.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters on a conference call Thursday that administration promises for a stimulus-fueled economic rebound were all “nonsense.”
