As Obama seeks bipartisan help on agenda, job approval rises

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For the first time this year, more people approve of President Obama’s performance then disapprove, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday morning.

The latest soundings come as the White House is seeking to deal with the political fallout from the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the president has been trying to find a route to bipartisanship by reaching out to GOP lawmakers in the hope of getting help with his legislative agenda.

According to Quinnipac, American voters approve of Obama’s job by 48% to 43%, up from April when 44% approved and 46% disapproved. The overall approval was the first since December, according to the poll.
The findings are based on the survey of 1,914 people from May 19 to May 24. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

“The increase in President Barack Obama’s job approval is a welcome step for the White House. His ratings have been in the no man’s land of just below parity for some time, and now the question is whether this is the beginning of an upward trend or just a blip,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll.

The poll follows most other national polls showing a steady erosion of faith in Obama since he took office. Of course, Obama’s popularity then was at an all-time high, partly because he was following George W. Bush, whose administration ended with a political thump, and partly from Obama’s own upbeat campaign that led him to become the nation’s first African American president.

“I know it’s been 18 tough months,” Obama said Tuesday night at a fundraiser in San Francisco. “And I know I’ve got more gray hair.

“I know some folks say, ‘Well, you know, he’s not as cool as he was. When they had all the posters around and everything.’ Now I’ve got a Hitler mustache on the posters,” the president said to laughter. “That’s quite a change.”

He acknowledged that he paid a political price. “You know, my approval ratings kind of start sinking. And some people are just not entirely satisfied,” Obama said.

The president blamed his loss of popularity on the reality that governing is harder than winning an election, as difficult as that may be.

“Remember what the campaign was about -- hope, change,” Obama told supporters. “People weren’t paying attention to me when I said change is hard. People -- a lot of folks, they just missed that part. They were like, hope, change -- and they thought, nice swearing-in, you got Bruce Springsteen singing. Everybody is feeling good. This is going to happen fast.

“Well, no. If it was easy, it would’ve happened before,” he said.

Complicating Obama’s standing is the administration’s inability to find a working relationship with Republicans. Obama began his administration taking a lets-reason-together approach coupled with the knowledge that Democrats had the votes to try to go it alone on tough issues.

That has changed with the Democrats loss of the super-majority in the Senate and the usual posturing that comes in a midterm election year. It has made the search for bipartisanship a sort of political quest for the Holy Grail and about as likely to succeed given the electoral realities.

“Look, understand this about bipartisanship -- I have a track record in my legislative career of working with folks across the aisle,” Obama said. “I also, by the way, am sympathetic to the fact that it’s hard for Republicans to work with me right now because there are members of their base who, if somebody even smiles at me, they think, you’re a traitor.

“You smiled at Obama. You’re nice to him. You were polite. And if you’re rude to Obama, we can raise money. So the incentive structure right now for cooperation within the Republican Party is not real strong. So I’m sympathetic to that,” the president said.

“But when we talk about bipartisanship, what we mean is, is that there’s going to be some negotiation, and, no, the Republicans aren’t going to get their way on everything. And there are going to be some times where we disagree. And when we disagree, if we’re not doing everything the way they want and they say, ‘I’m going to take my ball and go home, and I won’t vote for anything,’ that’s not a failure of bipartisanship on our part. There’s got to be some give on the other side,” he said.

-- Michael Muskal

twitter.com/LATimesmuskal