Whit Ayres’ comments on President Obama’s favorable ratings in Politico:
Republican pollster Whit Ayres, on the other hand, contends that Obama’s favorability rating is merely a vestige of the 2008 campaign — of affection for what Obama represented as a hope-and-change candidate and of respect for the fact that he’s the first black president.
None of that, Republicans say, will be enough to reverse voters’ perception that Obama is out of his depth in an alarmingly unsteady economy.
“His favorable rating is a touch higher than his job approval, which is primarily driven, I think, for admiration for what he’s accomplished as an African-American, as a minority in America, his obvious standing as a fine father and a fine husband and a fine family man,” Ayres said, noting that “most Americans, other than the hard-core partisans, want their president to succeed.”
“People are going to make the decision to reelect the president or not based on what they think of this job performance, not what they think of him as person,” he predicted. “Look back to ’96, when people thought Bill Clinton was a philandering cad who presided over a growing economy. Guess which way they chose.”
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