Obama Gets Surge in War Approval
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 8th, 2009 5:39 am by HL
Obama Gets Surge in War Approval
A new Quinnipiac poll finds public support for the war in Afghanistan is up nine points in the last three weeks, as American voters say 57% to 35% that fighting the war is the right thing to do. President Obama’s approval for handling of the war is up seven points in the same period.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “President Obama’s nationally televised speech explaining his policy and troop buildup has worked, at least in the short term, in bolstering support for the war effort and his decisions. History teaches that the bully pulpit can be a powerful tool for a president who knows how to use it, especially when it comes to foreign policy. The American people tend to rally around their presidents in military matters, at least for a while.”
The Art of the Tick-Tock
Walter Shapiro looks at “one of the most insidious forms of insider journalism, the White House tick-tock.”
Specifically, he takes apart the weekend stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post that provided “lengthy fly-on-the-wall dramatic renderings of Barack Obama’s bold Afghan decision to…well…surge and then not surge.”
“For all the talk about journalism as the ‘first draft of history,’ stories like these are more apt to be the first draft of spin. There are so many ways that presidential images can be sugar-coated and top officials like Biden can get the shiv. Of course, we want to know what happened in the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room. But these semi-authorized instant histories provide the illusion of an insider account without anyone, including the president, being accountable.”
