Obama's popularity blowing in the wind

If there was a degree of deja vu for Barack Obama fans crammed inside a university athletic arena in Hackensack, New Jersey, it was entirely deliberate.

They only had to close their eyes and listen to the deafening chants of "Yes We Can" to imagine they had been transported back to the heady days of a year ago when their candidate was on the verge of seizing the White House and making history.

Even with open eyes they could have felt some of that old frisson. Event organisers wandered the hall wearing shirts proclaiming "Yes We Can 2.0", as if they were selling the latest Windows update, and a giant banner stage-right gave top billing to Obama.

The name beneath his, Corzine, might almost have been an afterthought. This was not a re-election rally for Obama - not yet, please - but for Jon Corzine, the former boss of Goldman Sachs and now Governor of New Jersey.

He had invited the President to speak because, when Jersey voters go to the polls next week - New Jersey and Virginia are the only states where governorships are in play this year - it is not at all clear that they won't ditch him in favour of his Republican opponent, Chris Christie. The latest polls say it's too close to call.

That's better than in the summer when Christie had a double-digit lead.

But, in the final stretch, Corzine needs to remind Democrats of the fervour of 12 months ago when they overwhelmingly chose Obama over John McCain. "One more time", the disco beat booms before the two men arrive on stage in front of a crowd of about 3000 eager supporters.

"One more time. We're going to celebrate. Oh yeah. Alright." At the microphone, Corzine promises to be brief. "I know who you came to see."

Obama does what is required of him with his usual eloquence, speaking for 30 minutes. He looks happy to be campaigning again, relieved of Oval Office responsibilities for an afternoon.

But selflessness and politics do not go together. He is in New Jersey because what happens here will matter to him.

This is an off-year for congressional races, so, rightly or wrongly, the outcome of these two gubernatorial races will be viewed by some as a first referendum on his presidency.

The President has already suffered a slow, but steady, decline in his approval ratings, so it cheers no one in the White House that the outcome in Jersey is so uncertain.

In Virginia, where the President campaigned this week, the outlook is worse with most polls suggesting the Democrat candidate, Creigh Deeds, will be walloped by his Republican rival, Bob McDonnell.

If Republicans seize the governors' mansions in both states, the embarrassment will be acute. That is just what happened in New Jersey and Virginia back in 1993 before the Republicans seized control of the US Congress the following year, dealing a crippling blow to the newly minted Democratic president of the time, Bill Clinton.

But even losing one of them next week will scratch the sheen of President Obama, who seems, one year on from his election, to be hovering in the view of most Americans between competent and fumbling, notwithstanding the high esteem in which he is still held abroad and, of course, in the minds of the Nobel committee.

What is certain is that the almost-mad expectations placed on Obama that unusually warm night in Chicago's Grant Park when he delivered his victory speech last November, have given way now to a general unease about his performance in office.

For sure, he has mostly avoided calamity. Not getting the Olympics for Chicago doesn't count. Nor is his administration in disarray or anything close to it. (Clinton had barely arrived in office before he was instantly engulfed in mini-scandals.) But the Obama magic that should be working to protect Democrats like Corzine and Deeds seems mostly to have leaked away.

New Jersey is a state that naturally belongs in the Democratic column.

Moreover, since 1947, only two Jersey governors have failed to win a second term. But Corzine is unpopular in the state, thwacked by raising property taxes and the effects of the economic recession.

"The New Jersey governor's race is going down to the wire," predicted the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Virginia had been a red state - as far as the presidency was concerned - since 1964, but it turned blue for Obama and Democrats hailed it as a sign that their party was breaking the virtual lock that Republicans had long enjoyed on the South. Keep Virginia, they said, and the Democrats will keep the White House.

The plight of Deeds - 11 points down according to a recent poll in the Washington Post - is being interpreted as a measure of how far the pendulum is already tracking back to the Republicans in that state, and probably elsewhere.

Just as Obama's victory was powered in part by his success in winning over independents, it is now the independents who are feeling disappointed and fleeing back to the other side.

Back in Hackensack, Carrie Wilkins, a 44-year-old hairstylist, is exasperated by the bad press the President has been getting.

"He has a very tough job," she says, arriving for the Corzine event with her 14-year-old son, Troy, whom she has taken out of school specially.

"I don't think he has had a chance to do anything yet. He is trying, but it was such a mess when he came in. I kind of feel bad for him, actually."

According to the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, the President's approval rating is still hovering above 50 per cent, but only just.

Sometimes we forget, however, to measure Obama against his opponents.

Little fuss was made over a poll by CNN last week, which showed the Republican Party with just 36 per cent approval - the lowest it has been in a decade.

A more reliable observer of the scene may be Troy, the schoolboy. Asked if he thought Obama had done a good job so far, he paused for a second and then delivered a rolling shrug of the shoulders. "I guess so."

Meaning he, like many Americans, is not quite sure yet.

A lot of things are in the pending tray in Washington. Pending is the economic recovery, for instance. The breaking of the 10,000 mark on the Dow Jones Industrial Average this month looks encouraging to economists, but it is galling to the almost one-in-10 Americans out of work.

Pending also is the grinding effort on Capitol Hill to pass healthcare reform.

The success or failure of the healthcare push could change the perception of Obama profoundly, who has displayed characteristics that his supporters call patience and a preference for conciliation, but which others brand as dithering and betraying an absence of the kind of toughness that was typically personified by Lyndon B Johnson, 45 years ago.

"Healthcare could be his hammer," argues Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia.

"If he gets it, he will have proven that his style works, that you don't have to be an in-your-face LBJ type to get significant healthcare reform. But, if it falls apart or he gets a tiny piece of it, then there will be criticism that he is ineffective and not tough enough."

While momentum towards a deal seems to be building, a wise person would not bet on its passing just yet.

The debate has also exposed what some now see as a naivety in Obama's candidature: his dream of creating a new spirit of bipartisanship in Washington has hardly come to pass. So far, only one Republican has supported just one of the versions of healthcare reform to have surfaced from five congressional committees.

"Obama has created an atmosphere of no fear," Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University and political biographer, told the National Journal.

"Nobody is really worried about the revenge of Barack Obama, because he is not a vengeful man. That's what we love about him; he is so high-minded, and a conciliatory guy, and he tries to govern with a sense of consensus - all noble goals, but they don't get you very far in this Washington knifing environment."

As Obama takes his time deciding whether to send as many as 40,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan, he has again come in for attack, not least from Dick Cheney, who brooded in the shadows while in power but prefers daylight in opposition.

"What ... Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public," Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, shot back. "We've all seen what happens when somebody doesn't take that responsibility seriously."

The truth is that when Obama has played it tough, it has usually been in ways almost designed to infuriate the conservatives who call him lily-livered.

He fired the CEO of General Motors earlier this year before bailing the company out and his administration took extraordinary steps to force banks and lending institutions to scale back previously outrageous pay deals for their executives.

Both things were bold. But they also represent severe cases of interfering in the private market, which the right abhors.

Obama knows he is still on probation. In Hackensack, he asked the crowd "to cast aside the cynics and the sceptics and prove to all Americans that leaders who do what's right and who do what's hard will be rewarded and not rejected".

It was meant as an appeal to voters to show mercy to Corzine and give him back his job. But, with the November 3 polls being seen by some as the first verdict on Obama's infant presidency, he might have been asking for a little understanding for himself.

- THE INDEPENDENT