Confidence in Obama Slips, 'Malaise' Setting in
AP
The euphoria of 2008 is over: America is in a funk.
Elected last November on a wave of optimism, President Barack Obama now finds himself governing an increasingly pessimistic country in recession while muscling through Congress a health care reform overhaul and weighing whether to commit more troops to the 8-year-old Afghanistan war.
The latest Associated Press-GfK poll shows that Americans grew slightly more dispirited on a range of matters over the past month, continuing slippage that has occurred since Obama took office as the year began.
They were more pessimistic about the direction of the country.
They disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy a bit more than before.
And, perhaps most striking for this novice commander in chief, more people have lost confidence in Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan over the last month.
Overall, there's a public malaise about the state of the nation. "It's in pretty bad shape," said truck driver Floyd Hacker of Granby, Mo., a Democrat who voted for Obama. "He sounded like somebody who could make things happen. I still think he can."
Still, Hacker said, he doesn't agree with the president's approach to the economy, questions what the U.S. is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan, and isn't sure that Obama should have spent so much time on health care, adding: "He can't handle everything at one time."
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