Blame is difficult to duck for Obama

August 1, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON

If Ronald Reagan was the classic Teflon president, Barack Obama is made of Velcro.

Through two terms, Reagan eluded much of the responsibility for recession and foreign-policy scandal. In less than two years, Obama has become a magnet for blame.

Hoping to better insulate Obama, White House aides have sought to give other Cabinet officials a higher profile. They also are crafting new ways to explain the president’s policies to a skeptical public.

But Obama remains the colossus of his administration — to a point where trouble anywhere in the world is often his to solve.

The president is on the hook to repair the Gulf Coast oil spill, stabilize Afghanistan, help fix Greece’s ailing economy and do right by Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department official fired as a result of a misleading fragment of videotape.

What’s not sticking to Obama is a legislative track record that eluded recent predecessors. Political dividends from passage of a health-care overhaul or a financial regulatory bill have been fleeting.

Instead, voters are measuring his presidency by a more-immediate yardstick: Is he creating enough jobs? So far, the verdict is no, and that has taken a toll on Obama’s approval ratings. Only 46 percent approve of Obama’s job performance, compared with 47 percent who disapprove, according to Gallup’s daily tracking poll.

Reagan was able to glide past controversies with his popularity largely intact. He maintained his affable persona as a small-government advocate while seeming above the fray.

Reagan was untarnished by such calamities as the 1983 terrorist bombing of the Marines stationed in Beirut and scandals involving members of his administration.

Obama lately has tried to rip off the Velcro veneer. In a revealing moment during the oil-spill crisis, he told residents in Grand Isle, La., that he is a flesh-and-blood president, not a comic-book superhero able to dive to the bottom of the sea and plug the hole.