Obama struggles to hit right note

“If you call up somebody who has lost their job, or you call up somebody whose neighbor has lost their job, or whose brother or sister has lost their job, and ask them how the economy is going, or how they view the president, they're likely to be negative,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. “That's quite rational and understandable.”

In addition to the stimulus package, the White House has been working with Congress to enact measures that provide employers with incentives to hire or retain workers. Obama urged the Senate last week to pass a small-business jobs plan that has been a subject of partisan wrangling.

The president acknowledges he faces an uphill task in convincing Americans his policies are actually helping them.

“You know, even if you hear the president say we're on the right track and we've improved, you're still going to be frustrated about how slow the progress is,” Obama said in a television interview last week.

Distractions?

But critics say Obama has done too little to create jobs and is now paying the price. While he was victorious in passing the historic healthcare and Wall Street reforms, they were a costly distraction that consumed too much of his time and energy, they argue.

“It is perceived that he has too many other things going on that people do not regard as the central problem,” said Barry Bosworth, a fiscal and monetary policy expert at Brookings Institution and former adviser to President Jimmy Carter.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans interviewed in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said Obama had taken his eye off the ball on jobs and the economy to concentrate on less important issues.

While polls signal Democratic losses in the November election, Obama has not lost his chance of re-election in 2012. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were in similar economic predicaments in 1982 and 1993 respectively but both won a second term.

“If unemployment drops to 8 percent his political fortunes will shine brightly in 2012. If the unemployment rate rises, he is going to be in tough waters,” said Stephen Howell, a professor of American politics at the University of Chicago.

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