KEITH OLBERMANN: Unemployment is going down, his poll numbers are going up, thus the right has the only possible explanation for the resurgence of President Obama — those numbers have been cooked.
The fifth story in the "Countdown" — the president, in an interview yesterday, showing confidence, the kind that seem to flag during his battles with the Republican House last fall, unafraid to stake his claim to four more years.
(Excerpt from video clip) BARAK OBAMA: I deserve a second term, but we're not done. One of the things about being president is you get better as time goes on.
OLBERMANN: Mr. Obama's polls have been getting better as time has gone on too. His approval mark at 50 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, while 46 percent think otherwise. Mr. Obama's job-approval rating last cracked the halfway mark in that poll last May.
Fifty percent also agreeing with the president that he deserves a second term, and — while a majority still disapproves of his handling of the economy — his 44 percent approval rating marks his best showing in that category in nearly one year.
All of this follows Friday's release of January's Labor Department report, which saw unemployment drop two tenths of a point more to 8.3 percent, as private-sector employers added 234,000 new jobs.
So, who gets the credit? Mitt Romney supporter Virginia Governor Bob McDonald thinks he should get a share and his fellow Republican governors the rest.
(Excerpt from video clip) BOB McDONALD: Look, I'm glad the economy is starting to recover, but I think it's because of what Republican governors are doing in their states, not because of the president.
OLBERMANN: Making Governor McDonald's unsubstantiated credit grab seem rational, the "Fox and Friends" programming.
(Excerpt from video clip) BOLLING: So are they playing around with the numbers? Look, it's the Bureau of Labor statistics, it's supposed to be nonpartisan, but that's the Department of Labor. Hilda Solis heads the Department of Labor. Hilda Solis works directly for Obama.
(Excerpt from video clip) DOOCY: Are you saying they're cooking the books?
(Excerpt from video clip) BOLLING: I'm saying there's room for error. There's room —
(Excerpt from video clip) CARLSON: I don't think anyone should surprised that in an election year —
OLBERMANN: So, if we're going to just throw out accusations and see if they stick, how about — I wonder if Fox has been fixing the Nielsen ratings all these years?
Meanwhile, the GOP hunt for a presidential candidate goes on with a non-binding caucus in Maine that started on Saturday, runs for a week. Non-binding caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota, plus a non-binding Missouri primary tomorrow. You don't want your caucus binding.
Former Senator Rick Santorum, for one, seeming eager to move on:
(Excerpt from video clip) RICK SANTORUM: I think Tuesday's going to be a good day for us. That's going to help, hopefully, reset the race a little bit.
OLBERMANN: He could use a reset.
To no one's surprise, Romney winning Saturday's binding Nevada caucus with 50 percent of the vote, Newt Gingrich scoring less than half of that. Ron Paul closing the gap with Gingrich, though not with Romney, and Santorum trailing way behind.
Back on the campaign trail, meanwhile, Romney hoping to rouse the crowd with a glimpse on an imagined Republican future:
(Excerpt from video clip) MITT ROMNEY: We will cut federal spending. We will reduce its share of total economy and we will, finally, put America on track to have a balanced budget in this country.
OLBERMANN: Of course, for Newt Gingrich, that's playing small ball, he's shooting for — the moon.
(Excerpt from video clip) NEWT GINGRICH: We really have to set the stage to have a campaign this fall in which we have a team running so that we can win the Senate, we can win the House. We can start doing things from Day One.
OLBERMANN: And Rick Santorum, meantime, expressing the obvious:
(Excerpt from video clip) SANTORUM: We have two candidates, candidly, that are flawed.
OLBERMANN: He seems to be in agreement with the polls. That ABC News/Washington Post poll showing that if the election was held tomorrow A) Everybody would be really surprised, and B) President Obama would get 52 percent to Romney's 43 percent. The president would do better against Gingrich — 55-40, no fight.
And if you think people some Republicans may be starting to despairing about their current crop of potential candidates, one former candidate does not mind saying who is the ideal person was to take on President Obama:
(Excerpt from video clip) MICHELE BACHMANN: I was, I was the perfect candidate. America had their chance with the perfect candidate.
OLBERMANN: There's an old Bob and Ray sketch that starts that way. I guess we'll just have to take our chances without her.
For more on the president's surge in the polls, I'm joined by Salon's news editor, Steve Kornacki. Good to see you, Steve.
STEVE KORNACKI: You, too.
OLBERMANN: Does the president's approval number translate to anything, practically speaking, from this — essentially, the start of the presidential campaign?
KORNACKI: It's not directly predictive, because I think the approval rating he has is sort of as tenuous as the economic recovery.
But, I think there's sort of an indirect value here, because it's basically affirming sort of an old truism about presidential approval ratings — which is, that nothing brings them down like the perception that the economy is going in the wrong direction. Nothing brings them back like the perception that the economy is improving.
So, now we've had five straight months of declining unemployment. We have this report last Friday that really puts the exclamation mark at the end of that sentence. The other thing that's of value there is that this poll that we're talking about doesn't really take into account that news on Friday, because most of it was conducted beforehand. So, you know, if the — if the approval rating is going up because the economy seems to be improving, if the economy keeps improving — it will be predictive.
OLBERMANN: Plus, his overall approval is 50, his economic approval is 44 and this has been about — in many different subcategories of where he's judged by voters — he runs far ahead of himself. The — the — the sum is greater than the parts.
How could — what is that — that is indicative, though, about a presidential election. That is — they like the guy whether or not his policies have worked, which is tough to beat no matter who it is and what party.
KORNACKI: Right. No, and I mean, I think that's the thing — there is something to be said for the fact that you have Republicans running the country for eight years before Obama came in, and in the circumstances under which he came in. This is a guy, like you say, who has always been very personally popular. So, he's the kind of guy who people have been rooting for.
I think of Ronald Reagan on the Republican side 30 years ago. Reagan was a guy that people wanted to cheer for. They liked him personally. He dealt with economic conditions similar to what Obama's faced early in his term. Reagan's approval rating fell down to low 30s about two years into his term. The economy, just at this same time — you know, during Reagan's term, he had the fifth straight month of declining unemployment, it was growing again, and by the end of the campaign it wasn't close because once people saw some progress, they wanted to give him credit for it. And if there's still more progress in months ahead in economic news, they will want to give Barack Obama credit for it.
OLBERMANN: What if there is not. What if it — is there a lengths of tether? Is there a degree to the leash? What is it?
KORNACKI: Yeah. Well no, I mean — and then you can think of another example of here is what happened to George Bush Sr. in 1992. The Bill Clinton message that year, famously, was "It's the economy, stupid." And when things really kind of hit the skids for Bush, was those mid-year months — June, July, August — when the unemployment spiked from 7.3 to 7.8 just around the time of the conventions. And that really cemented the perception, in people's minds, that it was off the rails. That Bush had lost the country.
And the interesting thing there was — in the last week of that campaign, Bush got the best economic news of his presidency, the best job-growth numbers, but people didn't believe anything was changing.
OLBERMANN: There's one interior number — I have another question about the approval numbers — but there is one interior number on the ABC/Washington Post poll. Fifty-two percent said the more they heard Romney, the less they liked him, which was better than double those who liked more as they learned more.
Gingrich's numbers, far worse. It's basically triple — the more you hear the less you like him.
Is the — is the presidential election academic if those numbers hold, because what can do you do about that? How negative can you go to compensate for that? The more we know you, the more we don't want to vote for either one of the contenders.
KORNACKI: Right, it's interesting because this has been — this has turned into a very, sort of, ugly process for the Republicans. And it's one that's threatening to continue being ugly for some time.
It doesn't have to be that way in presidential nominating seasons. And I think of — you think Bush was re-elected in 2004, it's true, but you think of what happened that year — John Kerry and all the Democrats held their fire in terms of going after one another. Kerry came out of that Primary campaign well ahead of Bush, because all the Democrats had done was spend the time going after Bush, pointing out why they felt he failed in this term.
This is the complete opposite. You got Gingrich out there calling Romney a liar, you got Romney out there calling Gingrich names. Nobody likes hearing any of this stuff and you have the bonus — if you're a Democrat — you have Gingrich, who has basically been making the Democratic case again Romney about his tax status, about his Bain record, all the excesses of his private-equity work. So, it's been a bad season for them.
OLBERMANN: Quickly, back to the approval numbers. Do they have any practical value in the political fights ahead, particularly in the payroll-tax-cut extension?
KORNACKI: Yeah, no. I mean, I think the payroll-tax extension, I think the Republicans are spooked A) by the poll numbers now, but also by what happened in December when they kind of dragged that out and they tried to make a stand on that. I think they kind of realized then that the standing of the Republican party right now in polls is about as bad as it's been since 1996, 1998. They paid a dear price back then and I think they started to see, at the end of December, you know, there's some risk of that.
I don't think it's going to turn into like, "Wow, they're going to be really cooperative with Obama this year," but on payroll-tax-cut extension, yeah, I don't think they're going to have that fight again.
OLBERMANN: The fight may be lost already.
Steve Kornacki, the news editor at Salon. Thanks for coming in.
KORNACKI: Sure.
