Upbeat Public Gives Clinton, Congress High Marks in Poll

With optimism about the nation’s direction rising to its highest level since the Gulf War, Americans give increasingly high marks to both President Clinton and congressional incumbents, according to a national survey scheduled for release today.

In the wake of the agreement between Clinton and the Republican Congress to balance the federal budget, the survey also found significant increases in the percentage of Americans who say they prefer for control of Congress and the White House to be divided between the two parties, and the number who say the parties are working better together.

That’s good news for congressional incumbents. Among those who were surveyed by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, two-thirds said their representative in Congress deserved reelection--a higher figure than polls found in the election years of 1994 or 1996.

But the survey also found that 77% of Americans doubt the budget deal will actually balance the federal books. And though the survey found that the Senate hearings on fund-raising abuses in the 1996 presidential campaign are attracting much less public attention than previous high-profile congressional investigations, it also suggested that other allegations confronting the president are entering the popular consciousness.

When asked to cite, in an open-ended question, anything they recently had heard about the president in the news, nearly 20% of Americans mentioned allegations of sexual harassment.

Asked what issues Congress should tackle now that it has reached agreement on the budget, nearly one-third of those surveyed cited both education and reform of Social Security. Just 4% cited race relations and only 2% named campaign finance reform, both top priorities of Clinton’s.

The most powerful current in the poll, which surveyed 1,213 adults from Aug. 7 through Sunday and has a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, was the surge of satisfaction over the country’s course.

Fully 49% of those polled said they were “satisfied with the way things are going in the country” today, while 46% said they were dissatisfied. While that hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement, that’s the only time in the Pew poll this decade that a plurality of Americans have expressed satisfaction. Other surveys found strong majorities declaring satisfaction around the 1991 victory over Iraq in the Gulf War.

Likewise, despite the doubts about its ultimate success, the budget deal drew support from 70% of those surveyed, with 72% of both Democrats and Republicans endorsing the accord, as did 66% of independents. The most popular elements of the agreement--all drawing support from 88% or more of those surveyed--were the expanded individual retirement accounts, the children’s and education tax credits and the new program to provide health insurance for uninsured children.

Lifted by these tides, Clinton’s approval rating in the survey jumped to 59%, with only 32% saying they disapproved of his performance. That’s the second-highest approval rating Pew surveys have ever recorded for Clinton.

Yet American attitudes toward Clinton remain carefully calibrated, the survey found. By more than 2 to 1, those polled said Clinton was able to get things done. But Americans split evenly, 47% to 47%, when asked if Clinton was trustworthy, and divided again when asked if he keeps his promises, with 45% saying yes and 46% saying no.

Those equivocal ethical ratings came despite what the poll found to be an almost complete failure by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee fund-raising investigation to capture the public’s attention. Only 1 in 10 of those surveyed said they were following the hearings closely, while more than one-third said they had paid almost no attention at all.

On the other hand, when asked unprompted what they recall hearing recently about Clinton, 6% mentioned Paula Corbin Jones, the woman who has accused the president of sexual harassment. Another 12% cited “alleged sexual harassment”--a number that may have been influenced by the recent efforts of Jones’ attorneys to subpoena a woman who formerly worked in the White House.

The survey’s verdict on Congress was more mixed. Asked if they approved of the job performance of the Republican leaders in Congress, 42% of respondents said yes, and 44% no. The approval number is higher than it’s been in recent months, but still far lower than Clinton’s ratings. Meanwhile, respondents gave Democrats a slight 48% to 45% advantage over the GOP when asked which party they intend to support in next year’s congressional elections.

But Republicans, who hold the majority in both houses, can be cheered by the 66% of those surveyed who say they believe their representative deserves reelection. And 32% of those polled said it was better for control of Congress and the White House to be divided between the parties, while only 18% said it should be unified. The largest group, 42%, said it didn’t matter.