Obama political strategy not working

Aaron Blake and Chris Cillizza:

And in the aftermath of the debt-reduction “supercommittee” and its failure to come to an agreement on Monday, it’s worth asking the questions: is this new, Truman-esque tactic actually working?

In policy terms: not yet. And politically, it’s not looking great either.

Republicans say its backfiring, and they’ve got some ammo.

A George Washington University/Politico Battleground poll released last week showed one particular area of movement for Obama. Since May, the number of people who approved of Obama’s ability to deal with Congress has dropped from 49 percent to 38 percent. And while just 44 percent disapproved of his dealings with Congress six months ago, that number has since risen to 58 percent.

On every other issue, Obama’s approval and disapproval stayed in about the same territory over that span, which leads Republicans to suggest Obama’s efforts to rail against the do-nothing Congress aren’t working.

“The high ground that he was trying to grab has disappeared on him,” said GOP pollster Ed Goeas, the Republican half of the Battleground poll. “He’s gone from a net approval in dealing with Congress to net disapproval to deep disapproval.”

Similarly, an AP-GfK poll last month showed the number of people who say Obama is a “strong leader” declined from more than 60 percent earlier this year to 54 percent.

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There is more.

One of his problems is that the Republicans have been more skillful in parrying his charges.  The Toomey proposal in the Super Committee deflected his charges that they were intransigent.  In the House, Boehner has passed some job creation bills on which there was bipartisan agreement and the Republicans have come up with some job creation bills of their ownThat Democrats are killing in the Senate.  This makes it very hard tgo make a case that the Republicans are doing nothing.