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Poll: Americans Believe Obama's Bipartisan Pledge

And for nearly 100% of Democrats, the president can tell no lies on the matter

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by Dain Fitzgerald

Staff Writer t

Image: AP

Well Obama's in good standing with the American people today. Especially - like, super especially - with Americans of a liberal persuasion.

Politico reports that according to a new Gallup poll, "65 percent of Americans believe Obama will sincerely try to work across the aisle on national problems," while 57% believe the same of congressional Democrats. Just less than half, however, think that Republicans in the House are ready, willing, and able to act in like fashion.

Among Democrats, faith in the POTUS is nearly unanimous: 98% say Obama is willing to extend the proverbial olive branch to the GOP. Just 27% of said GOP, however, agrees.

"Obama pledged during the campaign to work with anyone who had good ideas to move the country forward," writes Politico's Byron Tau, before highlighting just where the Prez draws the line on the so-called fiscal cliff. "But he has [also] pledged that taxes will go up on high income brackets no matter what."

Via Politico.
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Do you believe President Obama is genuine in his pledge to work with Republicans?

Comments (view in Forum)

  • Rocker
    !
    I'm willing to give most folks the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately politicians are not 'most folks' and their track record and reputation is horrible in the 'truth' and 'trust' department.
  • MRMacrum
    !
    Do I believe Obama is genuine when he claims he is willing to work with the GOP? Yes I do. But I also believe him when he says they have to be willing to compromise also. At this point, the ball is in their court. Obama has stated clearly his indications and what he is asking for. The GOP needs to decide how they can come out of this with the least amount of egg on their face. Or not. And then I believe Obama will not blink and let the Bush Tax cuts and spending cuts begin their slow roll down the supposed cliff they are on.
  • MRMacrum
    !
    I also believe that to judge the end result would be to check the responses from both sides. If both are complaining then I will take to mean Obama is probably headed in the right direction.
  • u
    RobertJHarsh
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    I got a bridge to sell you if you believe Obama is willingly to work with the GOP. Me, I am happy to see the next four years of government shutdown to attempt to protect the producers of this nation and seeing the welfare class starve to death. But that is me.
  • Zazziness
    !
    @RobertJHarsh Seriously? You want children to starve to death? And you expect people will want to take your advice about how we should run our nation?
  • View all 23 replies >
  • u
    AceLuby
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    Yeah, how DARE he pass a healthcare bill based on a Republican idea. How can he live with himself trying to pass a comprehensive debt deal that is 4/1 cuts to taxes, definitely no compromise there. And I can't even believe he would shove MORE oil drilling and fracking down the GOP's throats.

    He should have compromised better by just doing whatever the GOP said, amiright?
  • CanisCanemEdit
    !
    @AceLuby -- What a small comment. My reasons for not believing Obamas current pledge:

    GITMO? Still open.
    Transparency? Never appeared.
    Bipartisanship? Hah!
    Sunset before signing? Nope.
    All Bills Published for 3 days on the White House website prior to voting.
    Riiiight.

    Those were the things that swayed me as an Independent voter to no longer believe what Obama promises.

    The Obamacare package is nearly 3000 pages of pork and BS as opposed to the tidy, Mass model which was 68 pages. How are the two even remotely comparable?
  • Kptpredsfan
    !
    @CanisCanemEdit A document that applies to only one state has 68 pages, a document that applies to ALL of the states and territories has more. Yes you have dug up an utterly AMAZING fact there, it does indeed take more paper to hold more words!
  • CanisCanemEdit
    !
    @Kptpredsfan - And it takes lots and lots of paper to hide pork and special interest favoritism.

    When those who created Obamacare are happy to use it rather than exclude themselves from it, I will then give it some credence as reasonable law.

    However, Obama, his family, his staff, their families, the Senate, their families, Congress and their families and selected others are excluded from the mandate.

    Considering that the law is wonderful and all fullfilling, one wonders why the elite's are excluded?
  • Zazziness
    !
    Yes, I think he's always been genuine about it. I know because on the far left, there is constant squawking about his willingness to compromise. And I fit with the majority in my opinion of the Republicans. They have done everything they could to stand in the way of our economic recovery for base political reasons and I'm skeptical they'll change their ways. I wish they would, though.
  • CanisCanemEdit
    !
    Would you have said the same when Democrats were saying no to Bush?

    I don't really think that Obama, the Democrats or the Republicans are too interested in genuine "bipartisanship".

    Remember these quote:

    Obama in Philidelphia, 10/10/10 - "They (the Republicans) can ride with us if they want, but they got to get in the back seat."

    Obama in Providence, 10/16/10 - "We don't mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they got to sit in back."

    Obama in Minneapolis, 10/23/10 - "You can ride with us if you want, but you got to sit in the backseat."

    http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/2010...

    What was the bipartisan parts of those statements?

    On a side note, I find this article from Politico amusing, as nearly the same arguments are now being used against Obama.

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0708/H...

    Thoughts?
  • Zazziness
    !
    @CanisCanemEdit He was saying the Republicans and Democrats will be riding in the same car but the Republicans have got to accept their not in the driver's seat right now.
  • Zazziness
    !
    @CanisCanemEdit Of course it's bipartisan. What do you expect? When the Republicans are in power, it's all the Republican's way and when the Democrats are in power, it's still all the Republican's way. He is saying he is not shutting out the Republicans and he is willing to work with them. If they can't take less than utter and total control, then the GOP is severely flawed.
  • CanisCanemEdit
    !
    @Zazziness - I "expect" both parties to put on their big-boy pants and work together, regardless of which party is in "power".

    As for Mr. Obama being willing to work with the Republicans, I remember the Christmas eve vote on Obamacare, AFTER Obama and Pelosi declared there would be no vote until after the Winter Recess. Once the majority of Republicans had left for Recess the vote was held.

    That's bipartisan? No wonder the Repubs dug their heels in and refused to play.

    Flip it back to the Bush II terms and you find the Democrats being obstructionists all the way.

    What now makes you think anything will change?
  • View all 7 replies >
  • o
    NO-BAMA
    !
    Nope. I'd like to see the actual breakdown of the poll numbers and see who was actually polled.
    Anyone that believes anything Barry says isn't all there.
    I guess getting freebies and not having any personal responsibility in life tends to make people believe in and support Barry's fantasy world.
  • Zazziness
    !
    Every single time one of you right-wingers retell the myth you made up for yourselves last week, it makes me shake my head. Mr. Obama was not elected because of freebies. He was elected because the Republicans ran a weak candidate who had came across like Thurston Howell in a bad mood. Until you own your mistakes, you're going to repeat them. But you keep telling yourself myths if it makes you feel better.
  • u
    AceLuby
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    What are all these 'freebies' you guys keep blabbering about? Most 'freebies' are called 'tax cuts' and cost taxpayers over $1 trillion a year. Oh, that's right,'tax cuts' which cause debt are better than 'spending' which causes debt. Gotta love GOP logic. Tax cuts and fees... good, spending and investment in public utilities... bad.
  • Kajai
    !
    Do u know from every million dollars spent on welfare for the needy two million dollars is spent on corporate welfare. Hmm
  • jessejaymes
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    You have to laugh at the right wingers. They don't believe any poll that says anything they don't like but they will scream to the high heavens quoting any poll that favors them. May I remind you of a great liberal who correctly predicted the outcome of 50 of 50 states and yet the Christian right said all along that the polls were biased in favor of Obama. Well?
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  • u
    Hireman
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    Considering his pledges prior to and during his 2008 campaign were pretty weak in terms of follow-through, I don't see a track-record here to believe anything he says. Hopefully he proves me wrong.
  • u
    SmedleyButler
    !
    Why does anyone want bipartisanship? Are you crazy? It's said democracy is two wolves fighting over a sheep. They have proven that they are traitors to the constitution. What ever happened to checks and balances? Both parties backed him signing the NDAA. We are a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC, NOT A DEMOCRACY. The secession movement is a reconstitution movement.
  • mimi57
    !
    @MRMacrum LOL...no. worse...but since I'm on double secret probation and being the best girl I can be, maybe
    just maybe, I won't be put in "time out" indefinitely.(:
  • HeresSomeTruth
    !
    The only thing I believe when it comes to Barack Obama a.k.a. Barry Soetoro a.k.a.Harrison J. Bounel is that he is going to lie more and deceive more. Romney would have been NO better just more of the same. Bipartisan-ism , Democrats and Republicans, party loyalists, tribalism/feudalism... the people running this two-party monopoly is playing the hell out of the American people. Suckers
  • PoliticalSpice
    !
    Too willing. I beleive he will give up far more then he should in terms of social programs...instead the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire first, putting Dems in a position to negotiate from strength, and miltiary weapons programs (as opposed to personnel) should be heavilly curtailed...
  • u
    rmancassman
    !
    That's the problem with liberals like yourself, you see the military if anything as more of a make work program much like the Europeans do than as an instrument of foreign policy. By far the single largest expenditure in the DOD's budget is personnel, & that's not even including legacy personnel costs. By far the largest single problem currently facing the DOD is the incredible age of much of their hardware. For example the vast majority of aerial refueling tankers in the Air Force date to the Eisenhower administration and most of the tactical aircraft in the DOD's inventory date to the Carter and Reagan administrations. While refurbishment programs can extend the lifespan of various kinds of hardware you eventually reach the point where it is no longer prudent nor cost effective.
  • Denizen_Kate
    !
    @rmancassman - Agreed for the most part, however, regarding those tactical aircraft: being replaced bit by bit via the use of drones, which has the added effect of reducing the number of required personnel in a given region. The main chunks of defense money should go to personnel (we don't pay our soldiers enough), and the high-tech drones and satellites that our enemies do not have. The days of spectacular aerial dogfights are over.
  • PoliticalSpice
    !
    @rmancassman
    You really do not have a clue. I am not a liberal, your assumtion I am shows ypu have a limited understanding of other veiwpoints. Personally i have no problem with scrapping the entire military enterprize, it was to reach accomodation with folks like you that i even mentioned the military. Fact is the main issue in military prepareness is not having fancy new weaponry, but in training and deploying. That is what takes the most time and effort. If you reduce the force the wespons are useless, one cannot put them in the field until they sre trained. As weapons can be manuafacturef failu quockly, this is what happened in wwII, and the manufacture of weapons/ships before they are needed is truly a wasteful make work program, it required jobs to make tbings that sometimes lie unused for years or decades, that require maitrnance which requires, ad you put it, make work jobs. I favor elimination of a standing srmy, but i was trying to put forward a proposal people like you might fond reasonable, i sound havd known better...
  • u
    rmancassman
    !
    @Denizen_Kate
    I agree that drones are indeed the future when it comes to the realm of tactical aircraft, however we're not quite there yet in all facets of tactical military aviation, in that drones do have their limitations as the Iranians proved recently when they were able to hack into one of our more advanced UAVs and crash land it. Until some sort of practical AI that can autonomously pilot an aircraft in all facets of a chaotic combatant environment is developed I think they'll be a need for a man in the cockpit for the foreseeable future. As for the era of the 'dogfight' being over, maybe, maybe not the Russians and Chinese are developing 5th generation aircraft and while we probably won't face either nation in a straight up conventional war they'll no doubt sell them to every nation that means us harm.
    @Elliotsreport
    I was wrong and ignorant to quickly and without much thought throw out a political label on you based on one sentence and for that I apologize. However the rest of your response is categorically false and shows a grave lack of understanding of military issues, especially in regards to the issue of industrial base. While what you say was true to some extent up until WWII, that is quite simply no longer the case. As I am a firm believer that whatever one can say on any given matter has already been said by someone else far more knowledgeable than oneself here are a couple of quotes for you to mull over and perhaps cause you to look further into the this issue.

    "A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

    Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

    Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense

    ...We recognize the imperative need for this development" Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation

    "The creation of material for war, under modern conditions, requires a length of time which does not permit the postponement of it to the hour of impending hostilities." Alfred Thayer Mahan
  • PoliticalSpice
    !
    @rmancassman
    Wasn't that the same address where he warned us to be careful of becoming beholden to the military industrial complex? The fact remains that the most time consuming and important fzctor in the military equation is having trained people who can operate andmaintain the weapons and who can be put in the feild. Training takes months, and without a trained force the weapons are useless. So long as there is a manufacturing capacity the factories used for covilian moror vehicles, air craft, computers can rapidly be re-directed to turn out what is needed for military purposes. In an interm period if the u.s. is attacked existing weapons and equipment can fill the gap until the new hardware is ready. In terms of future military capacity drones and small, specially trained units, with good intel is the direction of the future.

    In any case the u.s. should not be using military force against people or nations that do not attack the u.s. first. Building weapons creates a desire to use them, and hence my preference we not do so. A position that was shared by the drafters of the constitution, as is evident by the prohibition in art I section 8 of military appropriation of money for term of over 2 years.
  • View all 12 replies >
  • Bobolinsky
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    And when President Obama throws a wrench into the works like he did the "Grand Bargain" of 2011, the propaganda wing of the Obama Administration, aka the Mainstream Media, will convince the willfully gullible and ignorant Lefties that it was all because of the republicans in 1/2 of one house of Congress.
  • MRMacrum
    !
    ".........the willfully gullible and ignorant Lefties that it was all because of the republicans in 1/2 of one house of Congress"

    .........1/2 of one house? Nevermind the House of Representatives which is under the control of the fringe Tea Party reps, unless one party has 60 members in the Senate, then the minority can ruin the majority's day with the use or even just the threat of the filibuster. The GOP in the Senate used the filibuster 241 times between 2009 and into 2012. So it is not being gullible to see the GOP as the problem with moving things forward. They have used every obstructionist trick they can to keep Obama backed legislation from making it through. To swallow the swill from the Right is being gullible.
  • MRMacrum
    !
    @Bobolinsky - Warren, new Senator from Mass. beat him to the punch by promising to bring it up on the first day of the next Congress when any member can demand a simple up or down vote on anything.

    Regardless, the filibuster needs to be modified or tossed. And don't get me wrong, the Democrats have abused in the past also. But nowhere near the abuse of it by the GOP. Since 1992 the Democrats have used it 352 times, the last time being in 2006. The GOP since 1992 has used it 591 times. The last time was this year 2012.

    I hope they are successful. It needs to be changed.
  • Bobolinsky
    !
    @MRMacrum--

    352 X 1.5 = 528

    So the republicans still beat out democrats by 63 when adjusted for number of years each party was in the Presidency.

    Funny you should bring up Fauxcahontas though. She also beat Obama to the punch when she said "“There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there - good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory..."

    She's a laugh riot. What does the federal government have to do with firefighters, police, schools, or local roads? Last I checked, small and medium sized businesses like the factory she mentions don't get the tax breaks that large corporations are always able to wring out of localities... That means they pay local taxes... so that means that when she's talking about what "the rest of us paid for"? She willfully ignores the fact that those small and medium sized business owners are included in "the rest." Then she goes on to make the claim that the federal government is the proper level of government to be addressing her perceived problem.
  • bsking
    !
    @LGRepublican I wouldn't look up , that's when 1 of his henchmen would put the hypodermic needle in your neck like the KGB use to do.
  • Kajai
    !
    @LGRepublican
    Lol that reminds me of something funny I read a while back.
    I wish president Obama would tell us eating yellow snow is bad, just to see the GOP trying to convince us its good for us.
  • MongoAPillager
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    @FollowTheMoney i think you are right,at least with the partisan bickering it slows down their time table,even though its more or less scripted.i sometimes think of american as an lion surrounded by hyaenas and a body full of cancer
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