Obama’s bad-cop act is working
President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are settling into a good-cop, bad-cop routine. Biden supplies empathy, negotiating skills, and comic relief. Obama is assertive, sometimes combative, clear about what he wants and when he wants it, and given to reminders that a) he won the election and b) polls show the public agrees with his agenda. …
“We can do more” to cultivate relationships, conceded senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer, and said that it would happen. “But this idea that if the president just played golf with the speaker more often or broke bread with [Senate Republican Leader Mitch] McConnell more often, all of our problems would be solved, is a relic of an entirely different era.”
The White House doesn’t have much incentive to rejigger because, surprise, polls, by and large, show that a majority of Americans like this unapologetic second-term Obama. Six in 10 people viewed him favorably in one recent poll.
Obama’s job-approval rating in Gallup’s tracking poll stood Thursday at 53 percent, better than his 49 percent average during his first term, when he took office amid the hopes of a nation making history, then crashed on the rocks of a recession and sometimes seemed hapless in the teeth of ceaseless Republican attacks and opposition.
Blowback
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When your policies violate the Constitution both a and b are irrelevant.
Charlemagne on February 2, 2013 at 9:20 AM
Let’s see how popular he is in 6-9 months. The warning lights are flashing all over the place.
Mr. D on February 2, 2013 at 9:32 AM
You can’t do ‘good cop, bad cop’ when one is like the Gestapo and the other is like the Keystone Kops.
ajacksonian on February 2, 2013 at 9:33 AM
He doesn’t need Biden. Obama is the good cop and the bad cop. He’s the progressive and the moderate. He’s anything his audience wants that day, just ask the newstainment media.
forest on February 2, 2013 at 9:34 AM
Jeez, every President that gets reelected gets a bounce in the polls for a while. Just ask George W. Bush how long that lasts.
Obama just got the one policy change he actually campaigned on, an increase in the top tax rate. Everything else he tries to do is going to have to be sold to the American people and he has proven he is not very good at that outside of the campaign. Of course, and endlessly cheerleading media may help.
rockmom on February 2, 2013 at 9:36 AM
But he says that the public agrees with him even when they don’t and the polls prove it. And oddly enough, it is never questioned, just accepted and the conversation moves on.
Cindy Munford on February 2, 2013 at 9:38 AM
Well, at least you shouldn’t be able to get away with. Thank you, Media.
Cindy Munford on February 2, 2013 at 9:40 AM
It’s not difficult to have good ratings while the country is in dire straits. As long as the media is playing keep-away and never places blame on Obama or his administration.
Which is exactly what our media has done. Mainstream media has become state-run television.
ButterflyDragon on February 2, 2013 at 9:56 AM
Even if you can swallow Obama as a “bad cop” rather than those 2 as the Keystone cops, it’s routinely the President who is supposed to be the “good” and the VP the “bad”.
Marcus on February 2, 2013 at 10:13 AM
Dude got a 4 point bounce after being reelected and inaugurated again? GASP! It’s almost as if he’s receiving a 2nd honeymoon from a slight majority of the American people who are hoping this term doesn’t suck as bad as the last one.
Here’s the thing about honeymoons. They don’t last forever(well except for Obama and the media). And while Bush couldn’t see the Social Security reform backlash and Katrina coming down the pike, everyone who’s paying attention knows that a crappy economy(which is even worse than we thought), tax hikes, and Obamacare will all create a dark cloud over Obama’s 2nd term. And who knows what unexpected developments could make things even worse(a nuclear Iran?)?
Doughboy on February 2, 2013 at 10:31 AM
Don’t you mean “Dumb Cop and Dumber Cop”?
RoadRunner on February 2, 2013 at 11:15 AM