President Barack Obama is mapping out a post-Labor Day plan to regain the political offensive, including a private meeting next Tuesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
After taking office with a two-thirds approval rating, Obama has watched it slip closer to 50 percent. Over the summer, he lost ground on the health care debate and other aspects of his crowded agenda, and his dealings with Congress — controlled by fellow Democrats — also worsened as worries increased about losses in next year's midterm elections.
The most important domestic political gambit of Obama's nearly eight-month-old presidency — to expand government's role in health care coverage and increase regulation of private insurers — faces an iffy prognosis after a tough August.
The public also has lost some enthusiasm for the war in Afghanistan, even as Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander there, is pushing for more troops.
A McClatchy-Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that 40 percent of Americans favored the sort of health overhaul that Obama's been talking about and 45 percent opposed it. In the poll of 1,057 adults conducted Thursday through Monday, three-fourths also wanted incremental change versus fixing everything at once. Asked about the war in Afghanistan, only 29 percent thought that the U.S. is winning. Just 40 percent of Americans thought that things are moving in the right direction.
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