30% Give Obama Good Marks for Handling of Gates Incident

Shouldn't the Rasmussen Reports headline read:

Only 30% Give Obama Good Marks for Handling of Gates Incident? Especially since almost half of the survey respondents said he did a poor job....

30% Give Obama Good Marks for Handling of Gates Incident

Thursday, July 30, 2009

In an effort to defuse a national controversy, President Obama is hosting a black Harvard professor and the policeman who arrested him at the White House today, but just 30% of U.S. voters give the president good or excellent marks for his handling of the situation over the past week.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 44% believe Obama has done a poor job dealing with the situation in recent days.

Despite the president’s damage control efforts, the new findings are little changed from late last week when 26% said Obama did a good or excellent job answering a press conference question about the incident. Forty-six percent (46%) said the president’s response was poor.

As in the earlier survey, there is a wide division between the views of white and black Americans. Seventy-eight percent (78%) of African-Americans say the president has done a good or excellent job dealing with the controversy over the past week. Just 23% of whites agree, but 50% say he’s done a poor job.

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While some have suggested that the incident is a “teachable moment” about race relations in America, voters have mixed feelings: 44% believe that to be true, but 34% don’t. Twenty-two percent (22%) are not sure.

Sixty-eight percent (68%) of blacks see it as a teachable moment. Whites are very closely divided over the question.

Perhaps that’s because 78% of voters nationwide say relations between white Americans and black Americans are better today than they were in the 1960s. Eighty percent (80%) of whites and 71% of blacks say this is true. Just 12% of all voters disagree and say relations are not better.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters also say relations between white and black Americans are getting better. Only 17% say they are getting worse, while 16% say neither is true.

There is little racial disagreement on this question either. Sixty-seven percent (67%) of blacks and 61% of whites say race relations in America are improving.

African-American voters are twice as likely as whites, though, to say America is heading in the right direction these days.

Interestingly, voters overall have a more positive view of American society than they think the president does. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters view society as fair and decent, up four points from June, but 49% think Obama sees U.S. society as generally unfair and discriminatory. This marks an eight-point increase in that perception of the president since last month.

At a July 22 press conference, the president was asked about the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates and his subsequent complaint of racial profiling. While admitting he did not know all the details and acknowledging that the professor was a friend, Obama said the police acted "stupidly."

As more details emerged about the incident and the policeman involved, the president apologized for his comment and sought to calm the growing controversy by inviting both men to the White House for a beer.

There’s no question that voters are following the story. Seventy-five percent (75%) say they are following it at least somewhat closely, with 49% following very closely.