While the White House might argue the point, it appears that the epidemic of Obamamania that swept across the nation’s college campuses a couple of years ago ended before the midterm elections.
The Prez certainly gave it the old college try. During a month-long campus outreach, he spoke at five schools, chatted with Rolling Stone, did a Town Hall gig on MTV, and fielded questions from “hundreds of college journalists on a conference call.” Still, SEPA News reported that the president’s popularity had not regained its hoped-for momentum.
In fact, an AP/mtvU poll in mid-October found that 44 percent of Americans aged 18-24 approve of Obama’s job performance, while 27 percent disapprove. That’s a marked shift from the results of the same poll in May 2009 when 60 percent approved and only 15 percent disapproved.
Even the handpicked audience couldn’t save him. At the Town Hall forum broadcast on MTV, BET and CMT, student Adam Hunter, asked why – after the stimulus and the bailouts – and the ongoing high unemployment – should “we still support you going forward with your economic policies, and if the economy does not improve over the next years, why should we vote you back in?”
To which the president responded that the majority of job loss occurred “before he took office and prior to the stimulus bill,” adding that the stimulus bill “worked in terms of helping to cushion the fall.”
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Deborah Lambert writes the Squeaky Chalk column for Accuracy in Academia.
If you would like to comment on this article, e-mail mal.kline@academia.org.
