Below The Beltway

CNN is out with a new poll that shows that, for the first time since he took office most Americans disagree with Obama on major issues:

WASHINGTON (CNN) – For the first time since he took over in the White House, Americans don’t see eye to eye with President Barack Obama on the important issues, according to a new national poll. But the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey does indicate that a majority approve of how Obama’s handling his duties as president.

According to the poll, which was released Tuesday, 48 percent of people questioned say that they agree with Obama on the issues that matter most to them, with 51 percent saying no. That’s a switch from April, when 57 percent said they agreed with the president on important issues, with 41 percent disagreeing.

“Obama is facing crunch time on a number of controversial issues, from health care to financial regulation to cap and trade to Afghanistan,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “The fact that most Americans no longer agree with him on important issues makes his task harder.”

The numbers are similar if you look at similar polls from Rasmussen:

And Harris Interactive:

The numbers don’t look good for Obama, but Allahpundit isn’t convinced:

On 12 separate issues, the number willing to say he’s doing “pretty good” tops out at 41 percent? CNN has his job approval at 55 percent; even assuming that’s a bit skewed, it can’t be much worse than 50. In which case, how you do get from a high of 41 on individual issues to overall approval of 50? My inner pessimist says things can’t be this rosy for the GOP. Can they?

Well, no, but for two different reasons.

First of all, I don’t think it’s all that surprising that we’d see a poll where, albeit by slim margins, the American public disagrees with the President on major issues while at the same time giving him a job approval rating above 50%. For one thing, there’s more than just agreement on policy issues that goes into answering the question “Do you approve of the job President Obama is doing ?”; it also involves a general assessment by voters of how the President is managing the job of President and the image of the President. Second, and this should never be forgotten, there’s still quite clearly a sizable amount of public good will for the President even if there isn’t agreement with his specific policies. We saw this in a different way during the Reagan Administration when President Reagan remained popular with the public even when the same polls showed that the public didn’t agree with his position on specific issues.

Second, whatever these numbers mean, they don’t necessarily mean that there’s good news ahead for Republicans for the reasons I noted yesterday. In fact, the one saving grace that Obama and the Democrats can still count on is that the general public still seems to hate Republicans more. As long as that’s the case, I don’t think we’ll see any real benefit to the GOP.