http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/434315b2-8ea6-11df-8a67-00144feab49a.html

Obama faces growing credibility crisis
By Edward Luce in Washington 

Published: July 13 2010 18:51 | Last updated: July 13 2010 18:51

Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s chief spokesman, got into hot water this 
week for daring to speak the truth – that the Democrats could lose 
control of the House of Representatives in November. But it could be 
even worse than that. 

Contrary to pretty much every projection until now, Democratic control 
of the Senate is also starting to coming into question. While Mr Obama’s 
approval ratings have continued to fall, and now hover at dangerously 
close to 40 per cent according an ABC-Washington Post poll published on 
Tuesday, the fate of his former colleagues in the Senate looks even 
worse. 


In the past few days polls have shown Republican challengers taking the 
lead over previously safe Democratic incumbents, such as Barbara Boxer 
in California and Russ Feingold in Wisconsin. Indeed, given the 
uniformly negative direction in the numbers, it is now quite possible 
the Republicans could win the Senate seats formerly held by both 
President Obama in Illinois, and Joe Biden, vice-president, in Delaware. 

Add to that the continuing woes of Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic 
majority leader, in Nevada, where the Republican party’s recent 
nomination of Sharron Angle, a far-right and highly eccentric Tea Party 
supporter, appear to have had no positive effect on Mr Reid’s prospects, 
and the Grand Old party has a good shot at taking control of both houses 
of Congress. Worse for Mr Obama, political scientists say that at this 
stage in the calendar, there is almost nothing he can do about it. 

“If you ask me where the silver lining is for President Obama, I have to 
say I cannot see one,” says Bill Galston, a former Clinton official, who 
has been predicting for months the Democrats could lose the House. “Just 
as BP’s failure to cap the well has been so damaging, Obama’s failure to 
cap unemployment will be his undoing. There is nothing he can do to 
affect the jobless rate before November.”

The direction of the data could hardly be worse. According to Democracy 
Corps, a group headed by Stanley Greenberg, a liberal pollster who is a 
close friend of Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, a majority of 
US citizens see Mr Obama as “too liberal”. 

Astonishingly, 55 per cent of citizens think Mr Obama is a “socialist” 
against only 39 per cent who do not share that diagnosis. The same poll 
shows 48 per cent support for Republicans against just 42 per cent for 
Democrats. The numbers are eerily similar to 2006, except that it was 
George W. Bush’s Republicans who were on the receiving end four years 
ago. 

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President 
Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official 
and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and 
November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence 
and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of 
how he could do that.” 

In private, informal advisors to Mr Obama are almost as negative. 
According to one, the US public’s loss of confidence in Mr Obama’s 
leadership is a factor above and beyond their dissatisfaction over the 
state of the real economy, which continues to slow as last year’s $787bn 
stimulus starts to run dry. The adviser, who asked to remain anonymous, 
said the public did not know what Mr Obama really believed. Examples 
include his lukewarm support last year for a public option in the 
healthcare bill and his equally lukewarm support today for a Senate bill 
that would extend unemployment insurance and aid state governments to 
keep teachers in their jobs. 

In both cases, Mr Obama has offered only token, negotiable, support. “I 
never thought I would say this, but even I’m unsure what President Obama 
really believes,” says the adviser. “Instead of outsourcing decisions to 
Congress, he should spell out his bottom line. That is what leaders are 
for.” 

Next week, Mr Obama is likely to sign a historic Wall Street re-
regulation bill into law. Earlier this year he did the same for 
healthcare. But polls show the public either does not care, or even 
opposes these otherwise big reforms. “The longer this goes on, the more 
it looks like Obama wasted his first year on healthcare,” said the 
outside adviser. “It’s still the economy, stupid.”
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