Barack Obama: has he been mortally wounded by health care re
Barack Obama: has he been mortally wounded by health care reform?
When Barack Obama was elected President of the United States there was a widespread sense that he was no ordinary mortal.
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 7:00AM BST 09 Sep 2009
Obama's popularity rating of some 70 per cent after his inauguration now hovers around the 50 per cent mark
His historic campaign had engendered a sense of deification around him and his inspiring life story meant that many Americans invested their hopes and dreams in this inexperienced politician who had been a Senator for a mere four years.
Mr Obama himself made clear he did not want or expect to be just any old President. Rather, he saw himself as a new Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt of John F. Kennedy. Many Americans thought he might be a synthesis of all three.
No more. A long, hot summer, when controversy over health care reform bubbled over, has brought Mr Obama back down to earth. His popularity rating of some 70 per cent after his inauguration now hovers around the 50 per cent mark - the danger zone in which a President cannot be sure of re-election.
His decline in popularity is more than a temporary blip. Outside the realm of the extraordinary event - the September 11 attacks sent President George W. Bush's ratings soaring to 90 per cent - Mr Obama has now joined the ranks of the ordinary, mere mortal presidents.
But while the graph of his poll rating looks like that of a heart patient in terminal decline, Mr Obama has ample time in which to recover and solidify his political position. Although Democrats currently stand to lose a slew of congressional seats in next November's mid-terms, the odds remain that he will be re-elected.
Despite the contentiousness of the health care debate, in which conservatives have charged that "death panels" would be drawn up to tell pensioners it is too expensive to keep them alive and there has been a wave of opposition to "government-run" health care, there is a core of consensus.
Most Americans are faintly embarrassed that theirs is the only country in the developed world in which there is no comprehensive national health-care plan for all of its citizens, some 46 million of whom are uninsured.
There is widespread dismay at the huge costs of health-care and insurance companies, who refuse people with "pre-existing conditions" and jettison clients who become ill because the illness was not declared beforehand, are viewed as unscrupulous or even evil.
Mr Obama's problem, however, is that he has lost control over the debate, allowing his opponents to define what his plan was because the president himself had been too timid to spell out exactly what he wanted.
The anger over health care reform also indicates a broader worry about Mr Obama after the $787 billion (£486 billion) economic stimulus bill, passed amid a sense of economic crisis in February by members of Congress who had not had time to read it.
Americans struggling to balance their own household budgets view the national debt of $11 trillion - and increasing at a rate of $4 billion a day - with disbelief.
The colossal amounts of spending introduced by Mr Obama have left most voters wondering how on earth everything can be paid for.
There is moreover, no sense of crisis about the health-care system.
Although many grumble about costs and red tape, most insured Americans are relatively happy with their coverage.
Looking at a vague, hugely expensive proposal from a President whose profound wisdom is in much greater question than it was at the start of the year, many Americans would prefer to play it safe and leave the health-care system as it is.
Mr Obama will need to use all of his undoubted political and rhetorical skills to deliver a health care bill that not only passes Congress but will also improve the lot of most Americans.
Such a bill would be the first step in halting the slide in his fortunes. Failure, of course, could lead to an even more dramatic fall in the coming months.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... eform.html
