Stan Greenberg is Bill Clinton's former pollster. He's partners with famed celebrity political strategist James Carville in Democracy Corps. On Monday night, the group released a survey called, The Politics of National Security, A Wake Up Call.
The report has plenty of depressing news for Democrats when it comes to an issue in which they traditionally have finished behind the Republican Party – national security. But what about Barack Obama coming in and restoring the U.S.'s tattered image overseas, damaged by Gitmo and Abu Grhaib and no WMD? Greenberg blames some of that on how horrible the economy remains:
Even though voters are about evenly split on whether the country is more or less safe today, a 51 to 41 percent majority says the U.S. is less respected in the world than two years ago. This is surprising, given the global acclaim – and Nobel peace prize – that flowed to the new president after he took office. Yet a regression analysis shows that this sentiment is driven even more strongly by perceptions of Obama’s performance on the economy – and America’s relative economic weakness – than by his handling of security issues.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2010.