IS OBAMA MORE LIKE CARTER OR CLINTON?

Here’s a data point that should give liberals pause:  There is no statistically significant difference between the proportion of Americans who think ill of Sarah Palin, and the proportion of Americans who disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president.

In a Washington Post-ABC News poll of 1,001 adults released July 24, 40 percent of respondents viewed Ms. Palin positively, 53 percent viewed her negatively.

In a Rasmussen poll of 1,500 likely voters released today (7/31), 48 percent of respondents at least somewhat approved of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, while 51 percent disapproved.

The margin of error for both the Washington Post and Rasmussen polls is plus or minus three percent.  Ms. Palin’s negative numbers and Mr. Obama’s are within the margin of error.

This is remarkable, when one considers that President Obama is constantly in the news, and has received far more favorable news coverage than any other president in modern history. Since the end of the presidential campaign, Ms. Palin tends to make national news only when someone takes shots at her or her family.

Pundits say Ms. Palin’s high negatives doom any chance she might have to be president, which may well be so.  But if it is so, what do Mr. Obama’s comparably high negatives say about Democrat prospects in the midterm elections?

You may not have thought about this, but I suspect the 66 Democrats in the House who represent districts that were carried either by George W. Bush in 2004 or John McCain in 2008 are thinking about it a lot.

The president may not be as much of a liability for Democrats as George W. Bush was for Republicans in 2006 and 2008.  But it’s safe to say he’s just no longer much of an asset.

This is especially so for the 66 Democrats mentioned above, because Mr. Obama is much more popular in the heavily Democrat districts along both coasts than he is in swing districts in the heartland.

Ordinarily, opinion polls this far in advance of an election don’t mean much.  But they mean more this time because of the influence they’re likely to have on how the 66 and a few others vote on Barack Obama’s signature issue of "health care reform."

Lawmakers who support the president’s plan will face some sharp questions at their town meetings during the August recess.  In a Rasmussen poll released July 22, 44 percent of respondents supported Mr. Obama’s effort; 53 percent were opposed.

The poll’s internals suggest the situation is worse for Mr. Obama than these numbers indicate.  The only age demographic to express support for the plan were 18 to 29 year olds, which, the 66 can tell you, is the demographic least likely to vote in midterm elections. 

Will health care reform be, as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) predicts, Mr. Obama’s "Waterloo"?  Will its failure "destroy my presidency," as Mr. Obama said himself?

That would be true only if the president makes it so.  The typical American doesn’t care much about the inside baseball of winning and losing in Washington.  Swing voters don’t want the health care bill to pass in anything like its present form, but are not otherwise hostile to Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama has two futures before him.  Jimmy Carter was popular when he was talking, vaguely, about hope and change.  But when he dealt, badly, with real world circumstances, he became first a laughingstock, then a landslide loser for re-election.

Bill Clinton got off to a rocky start, ironically chiefly because of his plans to nationalize health care.  But after the failure of those plans, he quickly shifted his focus, and with a little help from Republican overreach was able comfortably to win re-election.

Will Mr. Obama be more like Mr. Carter, or more like Mr. Clinton?  It may depend on how much of his ego is wrapped up in the health care bill.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.