Reporting from Washington - President Obama, who won the White House with an electoral college landslide and enjoyed soaring public approval for the job he was doing in the weeks following his inauguration, has fallen to a 50% job approval rating in the newest daily tracking of the Gallup Poll released just now.
The new low for Obama in the Gallup Poll, which measured the president's public job approval at a peak of 69% after his inauguration in January, tracks other national polls, which recently have gauged his approval ratings at 51%.
It also coincides with apparent growing public concern about a protracted debate over healthcare in Washington, Gallup and other pollsters have found.
Should the slide continue, Obama will by no means be the first president to slide below 50% in the Gallup Poll, which has been tracking public approval of presidents since Harry S. Truman.
But Obama has reached his new low more quickly than most of his predecessors did, according to Gallup. The percentage of people voicing disapproval for the job the president is performing also stands at a near-high of 43%.
Aides to the president say he is not fixated on polling data. Obama entered office with high ratings, spokesman Bill Burton said today, but never thought they were "something he should put up on a shelf and admire."
"It's real easy to stay popular in Washington if you don't do anything at all," said Burton, but the president doesn't believe in working that way.
Slipping below 50% before November of the first year in office would represent "the third-fastest drop" since World War II, Gallup reports. Republican Gerald Ford slipped below 50% in his third month as president, Democrat Bill Clinton during his fourth month.
It took Republican President Eisenhower five years to fall below 50% in the public's eye, Gallup notes. It took both Republican George Bushes about three years. It took Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon more than two years.
"Ford's quick descent to below-majority approval was hastened by his unpopular decision to pardon Nixon in September 1974," Gallup's Jeffrey Jones said.
"Clinton also suffered from a series of missteps in attempting to change policy (gays in the military), fill positions within his administration (failed nominees Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood and Lani Guinier), and controversy over a haircut he received aboard Air Force One at Los Angeles International Airport," the pollster said.
It's not an irreversible trend, Gallup points out: Clinton and Republican President Reagan, who dropped below majority approval "faster than most other presidents," easily won reelection to a second term.
