Both the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll and the New York Times/CBS poll showed President Barack Obama's personal approval ratings remain high.
In the NBC/WSJ poll, 56% of respondents approved of the job the president is doing, in the NYT/CBS poll, it was 63%.
But right now, as the administration faces a fight over health-care reform that may not be as loud as the one the Clintons faced 15 years ago but could be just as brutal, the most worrisome number was this one: In the NBC/WSJ poll, a solid majority -- 58% -- said the president and Congress should focus on keeping the budget deficit down, even if it means a longer economic recovery.
Whenever people say an issue is so important to them, they're willing to sacrifice their own money to address it, pollsters do a double-take and politicians pay attention.
That twist began to show up on environmental issues in the mid-'80s, when people shifted from a NIMBY (not in my backyard) posture on recycling and fuel efficiency to saying they'd pay higher taxes to address them.
The good news for the administration is these same polls show Americans aren't so entrenched in their deficit concern that they want to specifically trade health reform for deficit reduction.
They weren't asked the question directly but they listed health care below jobs and the deficit as a concern.
The better news is that more than three-quarters in the NBC/WSJ poll said it's important for Americans to have a choice between a public/government-run insurance plan and a private one.
This will be the most contentious issue in the debate because it poses the greatest threat to the profit-driven health insurers who have the most to lose from reform, who have thwarted every
previous attempt at it and who are largely to blame for the fact America spends more than twice as much on health care than some other industrialized countries.
They're also largely responsible, in collusion with politicians whose campaigns they've funded, for the effective logic blackout in the public discourse that has kept them in an inefficient and highly profitable business for this long.
Because of that blackout, the debate here starts with a need for consensus on the fact the system is so expensive, not because it's better than France's or Britain's or Canada's, but because it's a structurally flawed model on a path toward implosion.
The president's argument health reform is an urgent necessity and will more than pay for itself in efficiency over the next two decades, hasn't registered in popular opinion here yet. People want to know how spending money will save money.
Part of the problem is Obama doesn't like reducing issues to "lines" but in this case, he may want to make an exception.
The other messaging obstacle is there's a coverage gap between the politicians, opinion leaders and cultural elites who shape debate on major issues in America and the 46 million uninsured who represent the moral argument for reform.
The people doing most of the talking don't know firsthand just how bad the system is because for them, it isn't.
You have to move back from that first circle of well-insured and happily provided-for to get to the nine other circles of loophole and uninsured hell.
The health-care system in the U.S. is like an expensive, 20-year-old sports car that started falling apart years ago and has now been paid for 10 times over in very expensive parts that never fix the problem. Americans can choose to pay for it 10 times over again before it sucks every dime out of their budget and is finally driven into the ground.
Or, they can choose to spend what they need to now to get a more efficient, practical and low-maintenance model.
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