Obama's State of the Union Address, Bounces and Public Opinion

No sign of a bump in President Obama's job approval ratings so far from Tuesday night's State of the Union address. We will report a more detailed analysis early next week at Gallup.com. Of course, history has already told us not to expect much of a bounce. We do know from a one-night USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Wednesday night that only about a third of Americans said they watched the speech (another 28% said they heard news coverage of the speech). Naturally enough, more Democrats than Republicans claimed to have watched. And naturally enough again, Democrats rated it way more positively than did Republicans.

Short-term bounces are interesting to note, but the important issue will be the degree to which the speech affects the president's positioning in the eyes of Americans from a long-term perspective. Unfortunately, that's an issue we will never understand perfectly. The longer out from the speech we go, the higher the number of potential variables that can have an impact on the president's approval rating. The State of the Union address may well be an important factor in providing context for Americans' views of the president as time unfolds, but one that is very difficult to measure.

The first substantive issue in Obama's speech was the economy -- as it should have been from the perspective of the average Americans. As I've noted, economic concerns are by far the issues most likely to be named by Americans when asked to identify the most important problems facing the nation today.

Obama stated in his address that ". . . the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again." To some degree these positive assessments comport with American public opinion. Economic confidence is in fact up, particularly when compared to one or two years ago.

Obama did not include jobs and employment in his list of aspects of the economy that have improved. He and his speechwriters instead cleverly transitioned into a focus on the need to improve the job situation without explicitly noting that it's still not in very good shape. (Gallup's Job Creation Index is at +8, which is certainly in positive territory, but nowhere near where it was in early 2008 before the impact of the recession was fully felt.)

Obama avoided discussing cuts in Social Security and Medicare. He instead stated the need for a "bipartisan solution" to strengthen Social Security. That's easy to ask for, difficult to actually do. He also called for "further reducing health care costs including programs like Medicare and Medicaid." That again is a fine goal in the abstract, but devilishly difficult to accomplish in reality. At any rate, Americans are not at all interested in cutting government spending in these areas. So Obama skirted controversy in this regard by limiting his comments on these topics to broad generalities.

Obama reiterated in his speech that he was open to changes in his healthcare bill. This fits with public opinion. We found a couple of weeks ago that the majority of Americans were in favor of major or minor changes in the healthcare bill. At the moment, a little less than a year after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was based, there is still no evidence that a majority of Americans like it. The Kaiser Family Foundation poll tracks public opinion about the bill each month. Opinions are labile. But at the moment, Americans are more negative than positive when asked the following question: "As you may know, a health reform bill was signed into law early last year. Given what you know about the health reform law, do you have a generally (favorable) or generally (unfavorable) opinion of it? Is that a very [favorable/unfavorable] or somewhat [favorable/unfavorable] opinion?)"

The big issue of the day in American politics is the divide in Americans' views on the appropriate role and influence of federal government as the desired instrument to solve social and economic problems.

Obama's speech gave us another important and revealing window into his thinking along these lines. Basically, the president appears convinced that it is appropriate and necessary to use the government as the instrument to ameliorate problems and foster progress in U.S. society. We certainly saw this in terms of healthcare reform. Obama identified the nation's healthcare system as a major problem facing the nation's citizens, and in turn initiated a determined effort to use the federal government to fix the problem -- culminating in the healthcare law of last year.

In his speech Tuesday night, Obama again identified a major problem facing the nation -- jobs.

We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time. We need to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit, and reform our government. That's how our people will prosper. That's how we'll win the future.

Obama's proposed solution again revolved around the use of the federal government. Obama invoked the huge government investments made in the "Space Race," which resulted from worries about the Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite and which included the billions spent to send a man to the moon in the 1960s (Obama also pointed out that the Internet was spawned as a result of government defense spending). Obama then laid out a plan for government involvement in investments in information technology, medical research, and clean energy.

Republicans reacted negatively (and predictably) to this -- highlighting again the classic divide in views on the role of the government in today's society.

Where does the average American stand on this issue? That's a difficult question to answer simply. We know that Americans are in fact worried on the one hand about the deficit and too much government spending, and are worried about the role of the government in general. On the other hand, Americans like the idea of spending more (or at least providing incentives) on a number of specific programs (like the use of solar and alternative energy). Americans are loathe to cut spending on almost any government program of substance, including the big three of defense, Social Security, and Medicare.

One issue for public opinion, of course, is the fact that government spending almost always benefits somebody. If the government spends more money on information technology and pushing for high speed Internet access for all Americans, as Obama has advocated, many companies in those industries are going to benefit. It's not an anomaly that the Washington, D.C. area has sustained one of the most enviable employment and economic positions in the country in recent years.

We see this issue in healthcare. Many observers call for cutting healthcare costs. But every dollar that is not spent on healthcare hurts someone economically. Extensive screening for any and all minute signs of medical problems, expensive tests, and intricate, complex, and involved medical procedures all benefit someone -- even if they don't benefit the patient. If all Americans were to lose weight, exercise regularly, and eat healthily, the benefits would be great for the average American and ruinous for many who now profit from overweight, out of shape, unhealthy patients.

In the same way, the looming battle over government spending has many, many ramifications for average Americans. To some degree it is a battle of the philosophic over the practical. A Congress person may philosophically endorse the idea of reducing military spending. But he or she may suddenly have a change of heart when it comes to closing a military base in the local district, or cutting back defense production in local factories. These same types of trade-offs will be involved in the broader issue of cutting government spending.

How this battle plays out will be one of the most interesting aspects of public opinion that we will be following in the months ahead.