• Cover Story
• Table of
  Contents
• Contents By
  Topic
• Columns
  • Brownstein
  • Cook
  • Crook
  • Rauch
  • Stokes
  • Schneider
  • Taylor Jr.
• Regular
  Features
  • Hotline Extra
  • Inside Washington
  • Insiders Poll
  • K Street Corridor
  • People
  • The Week on the Hill

President Obama has gone into full campaign mode for his economic stimulus plan -- town hall meetings, a prime-time news conference, an appearance with Jay Leno on NBC's Tonight Show. Meanwhile, his grassroots operation, Organizing for America, is canvassing door to door. All of this activity is coming none too soon: Polls show support for the stimulus plan slipping.

Support is still fairly strong, 54 percent in mid-March, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll. But that is down from 60 percent in February.

And a wave of populist anger has been building for a while -- at least since the Treasury Department first proposed Wall Street bailouts last September. "No more bailouts!" Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., declared last week after a meeting of the House Republican Conference, which he chairs. "No more executive bonuses! No more handing out of federal tax dollars to foreign corporations! The American people have had it."

Obama remains popular, with 64 percent job approval in the CNN poll, which is higher than his four immediate predecessors' scores after eight weeks in the Oval Office. But most Americans give him a negative rating on one issue, the bank bailouts. Taxpayers are enraged over where they see that money going.

That outrage has repercussions. Americans are becoming more critical of government spending. Ask people whether they approve of Obama's overall economic plan, and 65 percent say they do. But mention the price tag, "about $800 billion," and support drops by more than 10 points.

What do people want to do about failing banks? There are three options. Option 1: Let them go bankrupt. "I don't think [the Obama administration] made the hard decision. And that is to let these banks fail," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "Some of these banks have to fail." Forty-one percent of Americans agree.

Option 2: Let the government temporarily take over troubled banks. That approach summons the dreaded "N" word, nationalization -- a policy that former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan endorsed last month. "It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring," he said to the Financial Times. "I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do." Do Americans recoil at the idea of nationalizing banks, even temporarily? No. Nearly 40 percent think it is a good idea.

The least popular option? Give the banks more money. Only 18 percent favor that. Public outrage over the misuse of taxpayer money threatens Obama's agenda even though the public supports most of the things he is trying to do.

And he is trying to do a lot. Remember when President Clinton announced in 1996, "The era of Big Government is over"? Well, its being over is over.

Talk about big agendas. Obama's contains 10 major initiatives, including the economic stimulus plan, a bigger federal role in education, clean energy, more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and taxes. (He promises that "95 percent of all working families will receive a tax cut.") More than 60 percent of the public approves of how he is handling those issues.

Slightly smaller majorities like what the president is doing on health care, mortgages, and, perhaps his boldest initiative of all, the deficit. Obama has promised "$2 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade." The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates a total deficit of $9.3 trillion over the next decade.

The president gets less-than-majority support on only two policies -- his plans to rescue the banks and to rescue the automobile industry. Those sound like bailouts.

By 55 percent to 43 percent in the CNN poll, Americans think that Obama is trying to do too much. His own party is divided. Forty-six percent of Democrats think he's trying to do too much; 50 percent say he is not. The president's response? "The American people don't have the luxury of just focusing on Wall Street," Obama said on March 17. "They don't have the luxury of choosing to pay either their mortgage or the medical bills. They don't get to pick between paying for their kids' college tuition and saving enough money for retirement. They have to do all these things.... And, as a consequence, so do we."