Obama has a climb ahead in his second year

As the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama’s presidency rolls around, a fresh wave of polling shows his approval ratings have dropped amid public anxiety over his handling of the economy, healthcare and other issues. Much as they say they like the president personally, people have expressed unhappiness about some of his actions.

Obama’s advisors are devising ways to revive his political prospects and rebuild the coalition that propelled him into office, but the overriding question for 2010 is: Can President Obama rebound?

It won’t be easy.

Some of the strategies that worked for him in the past may prove ineffective in this difficult political climate. Here are some of Obama’s options as he moves into his second year, as well as their potential strengths and weaknesses.

What Obama cannot do

Coast on his charisma

In the 2008 campaign, Obama-mania was rampant. The story of a young, smart black candidate who hadn’t spent years marinating in partisan Washington stirred many Americans. Obama used the public’s fascination to maximum effect.

But his charisma was centered on his personal charm, stirring rhetoric and oft-repeated promise to replace the bitterly partisan stalemate in Washington with a more civil, cooperative, forward-focused administration.

Now the political chemistry is different: The lingering economic crisis has resulted in unemployment, home foreclosures and lost savings on a scale not seen in most Americans’ lifetimes.

And Obama’s sagging job approval numbers, which according to the Gallup Poll have dropped from a high of 68% at the beginning of his presidency to 50% this month, show that voters care less about his dreams for the future than about his understanding and empathy for their current pain and insecurity.

“In many respects, he’s done an excellent job in managing his image and telling his story,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart. “But I think he needs to do a better job of hearing the American people’s story.”

Load up the 2010 agenda

Obama kicked off his presidency with the legislative equivalent of an avalanche -- complex and controversial proposals for overhauling healthcare, combating climate change, reformulating immigration policy and shifting the nation’s economic focus to advanced technology and green jobs.

The result is likely to be passage of historic healthcare legislation. But congressional Democrats are exhausted, and voters are angry at the perceived lack of attention to their most pressing problems -- including joblessness.

The president must pursue a more targeted agenda in his sophomore year, Democratic politicians and strategists said. Healthcare proved an untimely detour, and some said the White House can’t afford another one.

“The timing was very bad for [healthcare] because of all the angst out there,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said.

Thinning the agenda, however, is risky. Latinos want a comprehensive immigration overhaul, a promise Obama already has delayed a year. He also has vowed to toughen regulation of the financial sector and curb global warming through a “cap and trade” system that would limit greenhouse gas emissions -- but would also raise energy prices.

“If U.S. unemployment stays at 10%, he can get three more Nobel Prizes and he’ll be a one-term president,” said former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.). “The need to create jobs is the overwhelming economic and social imperative.

“If you’re not seeing job growth in the 300,000 to 400,000 a month range, forget cap-and-trade.”

Outsource policy to Congress

Mindful of President Clinton’s ill-fated decision to drop a huge healthcare bill on Congress in the early 1990s, the Obama administration has done the opposite. The White House has given lawmakers wide latitude to craft legislation within Obama’s broad guidelines.

The limitations of this strategy are clear. Healthcare is moving toward passage. Yet the final bill is likely to deviate from the vision Obama laid out in the campaign, notably in its absence of a “public option” -- a government-run program that would compete with private insurers. Obama needs to be more directly engaged in shaping key legislation, analysts said.

“He came in with a pretty ambitious agenda, and many of us are frustrated that we really got sold short on a lot of different things,” said Michael Zickar, chairman of the Wood County Democratic Party in Ohio.

He said that allowing Congress to draft the healthcare bill hadn’t worked: “It’s a mishmash of a lot of different people’s ideas. . . . Compromising is necessary, but it’s been disappointing for many of us Democrats in that we’re compromising with ourselves.”

Keep courting Republicans

It was supposed to be a post-partisan presidency and Obama gave it a go.

He invited Republicans to the White House for a Super Bowl party last year and spent months chasing after a handful of GOP votes on healthcare and his $787-billion economic stimulus package -- with little to show for an effort that irritated some of his supporters.

The oppositional stance from Republicans suggests that investing more time in this project, particularly in an election year, is a lost cause.

“Rather than work to placate and accommodate the Republicans,” said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, “he just needs to defeat them.”

What Obama can do

Use legislation to his political advantage

A potent weapon for the president and Democrats is the legislative calendar, which they control.

Obama on Thursday rolled out his “financial crisis responsibility fee” -- a tax on large financial institutions, most of which collected federal bailout money. Whatever else, the bill is a means of dividing the two parties and energizing the Democratic base by invoking the unpopular Wall Street bailout.

In describing the tax, Obama employed some of the sharpest populist rhetoric he has used to date: “We want our money back, and we’re going to get it.” On cue, the Democratic National Committee put out a statement criticizing Scott Brown -- the Republican in the Massachusetts Senate race -- for opposing the tax.

Draw upon his credibility

The polling is worrisome for Obama, but there are bright spots. For one thing, most people respect him. A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed that most voters, 56% to 37%, said they believe Obama is “honest and trustworthy.”

Overall, support among independents -- a major part of the president’s winning coalition in 2008 -- has tailed off. Even so, 64% of independents think Obama has strong leadership qualities, compared with 33% who do not.

Obama’s supporters said it was inevitable that his approval ratings would suffer amid the nation’s economic woes.

“You don’t have to be a political genius to know that in this environment, it’s very hard to maintain very high poll numbers. We’re the governing party,” White House senior advisor David Axelrod said. “We didn’t create the mess that we’re in, but we’re the responsible party now, and that brings some heat down on us.”

But the fact that Americans still admire Obama is something he can build upon, his supporters say.

“With the hand of cards he was dealt, no president would have high approval ratings,” said Lanny Davis, who was White House counsel in the Clinton administration. “But people still like him. The likability factor is going to be the source of Barack Obama’s strength.”

Run with healthcare

If it becomes law, the healthcare overhaul will be the defining action of Obama’s presidency to date. But with the Quinnipiac poll showing that 58% of Americans disapprove of the way Obama has handled healthcare, he may not be the best one to go out and sell it.

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, said: “It’s just an empirical fact: The party has more credibility on healthcare than the president does.”

So Democratic lawmakers must make the argument that Obama’s healthcare overhaul will cover millions of uninsured people -- and paint Republicans as obstructionists who nearly torpedoed the effort.

Mark J. Penn, a former pollster and political strategist for Bill Clinton, said: “If the bill is successful, then the key will be finding the 20 million people who will be getting healthcare for the first time and putting them on TV.”

Gain from triumphs abroad

Obama faces challenges overseas, starting with Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. But as evidenced by his Nobel Peace Prize, he has made strides in improving the nation’s image through a more cooperative, multilateral approach.

Obama visited more than 20 countries in his first year -- a record. He is well-positioned to capitalize on the goodwill he is building abroad.

“I think Americans love seeing their president leading the free world. We want to be respected, and we know we need more allies and fewer enemies,” Begala said. “Americans are tired of their troops bearing the lion’s share of the global burden because of the Bush go-it-alone policy. So the more Obama is seen as leading the world, the better.”

peter.nicholas@latimes.com

cparsons@latimes.com