Obama Girl Has Second Thoughts

Amber Lee Ettinger, aka "Obama Girl," is expressing misgivings about the president's leadership.

Skepticism About the Freeze

Rasmussen reports that the public is not hot about the partial budget freeze:

One of the key new initiatives in President Obama’s State of the Union speech is a three-year freeze on discretionary government spending, but voters overwhelmingly believe the freeze will have little or no impact on the federal deficit.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just nine percent (9%) think the freeze will reduce the deficit a lot.

Eighty-one percent (81%) disagree, including 42% who say it will have no impact. Another 39% say the freeze in nearly all areas except defense, national security, veterans affairs and entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will reduce the deficit a little.

TNR on OFA in MA

The New Republic reports on Organizing for America's role in the Massachusetts Senate race:

The Coakley operation failed to tap into the deep well of Obama-inspired volunteerism in Massachusetts. But OFA hasn’t done a much better job of cultivating and channeling the kind of movement from which it was born—there’s a disconnect. “I think it’s not about the campaign,” says Massachusetts grassroots organizing consultant Tony Mack, who’s involved with a similar group called Cambridge-Somerville for Change. “If they were doing real organizing, which is encouraging leaders to think for themselves and developing their own priorities, then people would be ready to mobilize more when the time came.”

“The way you build up a strong leadership capacity is to give people independence and power,” Mack goes on. “They didn’t have that, and to some degree, the OFA model right now ends up being that people wait for instructions.”

POTUS v. SCOTUS

The 2008 campaign clearly foreshadowed the president's attack on the Supreme Court in his State of the Union.

July 10: And let's be clear, the Supreme Court's ruling on equal pay is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what's at stake in this election. Usually, when we talk about the Court, it's in the context of reproductive rights and Roe v. Wade. And make no mistake about it, that's a critical issue in this election. Senator McCain has made it abundantly clear that he wants to appoint justices like Roberts and Alito – and that he hopes to see Roe overturned. Well, I stand by my votes against confirming Justices Roberts and Alito. And I've made it equally clear that I will never back down in defending a woman's right to choose.

And Justice Alito might have remembered what the president said about him during debate on his confirmation:

I have no doubt that Judge Alito has the training and qualifications necessary to serve. He's an intelligent man and an accomplished jurist. And there's no indication he's not a man of great character.

But when you look at his record - when it comes to his understanding of the Constitution, I have found that in almost every case, he consistently sides on behalf of the powerful against the powerless; on behalf of a strong government or corporation against upholding American's individual rights....

When it comes to how checks and balances in our system are supposed to operate - the balance of power between the Executive Branch, Congress, and the Judiciary, Judge Alito consistently sides with the notion that a President should not be constrained by either Congressional acts or the check of the Judiciary.

Freeze!

The president's proposal for a partial spending freeze runs counter to his 2008 rhetoric:

From the first fall debate:

The problem with a spending freeze is you're using a hatchet where you need a scalpel. There are some programs that are very important that are under funded. I went to increase early childhood education and the notion that we should freeze that when there may be, for example, this Medicare subsidy doesn't make sense.

From the second fall debate:

I disagree with Senator McCain about an across-the- board freeze. That's an example of an unfair burden sharing. That's using a hatchet to cut the federal budget.

From the third fall debate:

Well, look, I think that we do have a disagreement about an across-the-board spending freeze. It sounds good. It's proposed periodically. It doesn't happen.

Filling Gaps in the White House Website, Part 34

In an interview with Diane Sawyer, the president addresses the lack of transparency in health care negotiations:

SAWYER: Health care -- going forward, should all the conversations, all the meetings be on C-SPAN?

OBAMA: You know, I think your question points out to a legitimate mistake that I made during the course of the year, and that is that we had to make so many decisions quickly in a very difficult set of circumstances that after awhile, we started worrying more about getting the policy right than getting the process right. But I had campaigned on process. Part of what I had campaigned on was changing how Washington works, opening up transparency and I think it is -- I think the health care debate as it unfolded legitimately raised concerns not just among my opponents, but also amongst supporters that we just don't know what's going on. And it's an ugly process and it looks like there are a bunch of back room deals.

Now I think it's my responsibility and I'll be speaking to this at the State of the Union, to own up to the fact that the process didn't run the way I ideally would like it to and that we have to move forward in a way that recaptures that sense of opening things up more.

The White House website does not have a transcript of this interview.

Lost Unity

In an interview with People, the president said:

What I haven’t been able to do in the midst of this crisis is bring the country together in a way that we had done in the Inauguration. That’s what’s been lost this year.

Gallup offers data confirming the president's observation:

The 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats' (88%) and Republicans' (23%) average job approval ratings for Barack Obama is easily the largest for any president in his first year in office, greatly exceeding the prior high of 52 points for Bill Clinton.

Overall, Obama averaged 57% job approval among all Americans from his inauguration to the end of his first full year on Jan. 19. He came into office seeking to unite the country, and his initial approval ratings ranked among the best for post-World War II presidents, including an average of 41% approval from Republicans in his first week in office. But he quickly lost most of his Republican support, with his approval rating among Republicans dropping below 30% in mid-February and below 20% in August. Throughout the year, his approval rating among Democrats exceeded 80%, and it showed little decline even as his overall approval rating fell from the mid-60s to roughly 50%.