Voters chat after casting their ballots in the Republican presidential primary on January 21, 2012. in Horse Gall, South Carolina. Photo credit: Getty Images.
Joe Williams, White House reporter for Politico, shares his perspective on new poll numbers showing Americans are increasingly confident that the economy will improve and what this might mean for President Obama’s re-election bid.
BILL PRESS: And more good news for the president tonight, this time from an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing Americans are feeling a lot better about the state of the economy. Thirty-seven percent now saying they think the economy will improve over the next 12 months, compared to 17 percent who thinks it’s going to get worse, and 44 percent who this it will stay about the same.
Now, those numbers may not sound so thrilling, but consider this — the last time that many Americans thought the economy was improving was way back in November 2010. Forty-five percent also telling pollsters they approve how President Obama is handling the economy, and, while 50 percent still say the disagree, that’s the best score the president has seen since last April, and more evidence that voters have faith that the economy might be turning around.
For more, let’s bring in Joe Williams, White House reporter for Politico, politico.com.
Hey, Joe, those numbers, you know, they don’t sound so great, but — with half the voters still saying they disapprove of how the president’s handling the economy — but even so, this is pretty good news for the White House, isn’t it?
JOE WILLIAMS: Well, it’s good news, not great news. Basically, the analogy that comes to mind is the patient who’s laying in bed with tubes and wires and he’s no longer on life support and is flickering the fingers and eyes start to go wiggle a little bit. So, it’s getting better, we’re getting the news that we hoped for, but we’re not ready to release the patient to go out and play touch football or start tap dancing or anything like that.
PRESS: I hope President Obama is doing a little better than that. He was up and walking around today.
WILLIAMS: He was. The patient being the economy, that is. But seriously, you raise a very good point in that these are good numbers for the president, given where we were, because the economy was on an uptick, and any chart and any economist will tell you that — the faltering started again once the debt-ceiling debate started to smack into the president’s plan. So clearly, you can trace a gradual up slope then sharp drop right around summer — late summer — of last year and now ticking back up to where it would have been a year ago had that nonsense not gone on.
PRESS: Yeah, but then we have that nonsense still coming up, right? Yet to go through yet again. When these poll numbers came out, Peter Hart — does the polling for NBC — said that it shows that the American psychology about the economy has switched. So, is that what the president is trying to take advantage of as he goes around the country — in Vegas this morning and then to Denver and in Detroit tonight — talking about his proposals and the State of the Union?
WILLIAMS: Absolutely. Certainly, he’s trying to build on that momentum. And that is sort of analogous to a baseball player from the movie “Bull Durham” who wears a certain article of clothing and starts winning. If you think that that’s why you’re winning, that’s why you’re winning and that’s all that matters.
So, the psychological recovery is almost as important as the literal recovery in getting the economy back on track. People start believing things are getting better — they may want to buy a little bit more, they may want to fix up the house they’ve been long delaying or get that car. That triggers the sort of economic uptick, and starts the momentum and builds on the momentum that’s already been started over the last quarter. So, things get better because people believe they are getting better and that has almost as much to do with the recovery as anything else.
PRESS: And meanwhile, on the Republican side — whether it’s Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or even, back in Herman Cain’s days, when he was around — you know, they start their argument in every speech by saying, “What horrible shape the economy is. What horrible shape the country is in.”
So, does this undercut their argument and — if they don’t have that argument to make — what do they have?
WILLIAMS: Well, what they’ve got is the fact that the economy isn’t sprinting around or isn’t doing much, much better or much robust than it’s doing right now. What they do fear is the fact that things will get so much better that they’ll have a hollow argument, they’ll be making a hollow argument when they start talking about the fact that things are so much worse under this president. Clearly, the facts show otherwise.
What they do have is this natural sort of resistance to crediting a Democratic president with doing good, and that’s an argument that resonated in South Carolina with Newt Gingrich, it’s resonating, to a degree, in Florida with Mitt Romney and Gingrich going at it toe to toe. And it’s a message that’s going to be slightly easier for the White House to refute on the trail going forward, but not necessarily a lock for them to convince everybody that things are getting better. There are a lot of people still hurting and there’s still some pain out there.
PRESS: Right, there was cautious optimism at the White House from President Obama on down when the last unemployment numbers came out and it was down to 8.5 percent. So, all of this could turn around, though, if that next report goes up instead of farther down, right, or even taking the same?
WILLIAMS: Well, certainly, we’ve had a slight uptick in the unemployment numbers this week. That is a reflection of people starting to look for work a little bit more, it’s not that big of a deal.
What could undermine the recovery is— even more than the economic numbers, the hiring numbers — uncertainty on the gas market. Gas prices going up. Oil — the Strait of Hormuz is under a threat by the Iranians. Instability in Europe with the debt crisis. Those are things that the White House can’t necessarily control and that keeps them up at night.
But there certainly are signs of life, they are going to do everything they can to protect it. There are some things they just can’t do and they’re worried — they’re keeping a close eye on that.
PRESS: Yeah, Ahmadinejad could, you know, sink the whole thing with just one stupid move.
WILLIAMS: He’s not a friend of the U.S. economy.
PRESS: Joe Williams of Politico. Thanks, Joe, good to see you tonight.
WILLIAMS: My pleasure.
