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Public Opinion and Elena Kagan Part Two of Two By Dave Andrusko Earlier today pro-abortion President Barack Obama held his first solo East Room press conference in 10 months. It comes at a time when his personal approval ratings continue to head downwards and the public grows less confident of his administration's competency. The former a President can live with for a surprisingly long period of time, the latter will do him in big time. Hence there will inevitably be a correlation between the speed at which, for example, the massive oil spill is contained and the velocity at which Obama's political fortunes head (for him) in the wrong direction. We'll use two separate TN&Vs to deal with two reflections on public opinion. The first is the public's view of Supreme Court nominee Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Two things stand out.
A couple of days ago CBS News conducted a poll that found that a little under half of the public has followed the toing and froing around Kagan's nomination. Most people hadn't firmed up an opinion. Sixteen percent had a favorable opinion, 11% unfavorable, the remainder fell into the undecided/hadn't heard enough category. In this morning's USA Today, we read about a USA Today/Gallup Poll taken Monday and Tuesday which found that 46% of the 1,049 people surveyed said they would "like to see the Senate vote in favor" of Kagan's nomination versus 32% who said they did not want the Senate to confirm the 50-year-old former Dean of the Harvard Law School. By contrast Rasmussen yesterday found that 36% supported Kagan's nomination while 39% opposed. In addition, "41% of U.S. voters held a favorable opinion of Kagan but 47% view her unfavorably, up from 43% a week ago and 39% just after President Obama announced her nomination." The organizing idea of the USA Today story was to compare Kagan's approval numbers with the five recent justices who'd been confirmed (her current approval rating were lower), versus those who hadn't been confirmed (her ratings were higher than both of them). She suffers especially when compared to Chief Justice John Roberts, who "was viewed positively by 60% by the time he was confirmed in 2005." The numbers for the other four are: Clarence Thomas (58%); Sotomayor (55%); Ruth Bader Ginsburg (53%), and Samuel Alito (54%). Kagan came out ahead of White House lawyer Harriet Miers (42%) whose nomination was withdrawn by President George W. Bush and Judge Robert Bork (38%), who was the object of an unprecedented smear campaign. Kagan's confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee are scheduled to begin on June 28. Since Kagan has never served on the bench, Republicans are asking to see a variety of other items Kagan produced to get a better handle on how she thinks and have a sense of what her overall judicial philosophy would be. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com |
