Morning Bell: Health Care in the Balance as Ground Shifts Under Obama

Mike Brownfield / January 19, 2010

One year ago, President Barack Obama delivered his inaugural address at the foot of the Capitol, laid out an agenda of “big plans” for his administration, and chided “cynics” who “fail to understand that the ground has shifted beneath them.” One year later, as voters head to the ballot box in Massachusetts, it seems that the ground very well may have shifted under President Obama.

And that ground shift might spell trouble for the President’s health care magnum opus.

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released yesterday, President Obama’s approval ratings have “plummeted to 50%, down from 64% after he took office,” giving him an average 57% approval rating for the year and placing Obama “nearly last in the ranking of former presidents’ first-year job approval averages.”

Why the dissatisfaction? For President Obama, “big plans” meant a year of “big government” in the form of the nationalization of private corporations, hundreds of billions of dollars in new federal spending and a massive government takeover of health care. Those liberal policies haven’t sat well with a majority of Americans. (more…)