Barack Obama entered with a 69 percent approval rating, the highest since President John F. Kennedy, according to the LA Times, but now a year later he stands at 50 percent, according to CBS News.
While some may criticize the large decrease, others still say there is room to grow.
“It’s hard to do a lot in a year,” said Elisa Levinson, a 20-year-old junior Asian studies and international affairs double major.
Now, with Republican Senator Scott Brown’s win in Massachusetts to replace the late Democrat Ted Kennedy’s long-standing position, some students may begin to question what effects it will bring for Obama’s administration.
Gregory Carlson, the current 20-year-old president of the College Republicans at CU, says he thinks it will bring positive change.
“I think it will be good for Obama to lose Congress,” said the junior mathematics, economics and political science major. “I think it will increase his chances for reelection because it will force him to compromise with Republicans, which is what he promised he would do on the campaign trail.”
Other students, like Jacob Taylor, a 24-year-old senior economics major and the former Vice President of College Democrats at CU, say they see it as a heavy blow for the Obama administration, especially for the current health care reform bill in Congress.
“The loss in Massachusetts is potentially very bad, getting Democrats to agree on health care and other bills is hard enough, getting Democrats and Republicans to both agree is harder,” Taylor said. “Really, the Republicans want everything to fail for Obama, and this will help them do that.”
Throughout the first year of his administration, one of Obama’s focuses was to stimulate the economy and he attempted to do this through the Auto bailout and Bank bailout, according to the New York Times.
Carlson said he thought not all the programs were effective, but he thought Obama’s big actions prevented an economic disaster.
“The economy could have completely crashed had they not taken action,” Carlson said. “I don’t even know if the actions they took did that much to save the economy, but the fact that they did the programs put the people at ease. People tend to get nervous when the economy crashes.”
Taylor said he agreed that Obama’s intervention helped the United States’ economy.
“The stimulus package helped the economy and a bigger one would have helped more, up to a point,” Taylor said. “It’s a qualified success because it kept the economy from getting a lot worse, and its benefits are still coming, but the good old days are still gone for good.”
Carlson said he hopes that Obama will adjust the deficit and accomplish this task in a bipartisan fashion.
Gabriel Molton, a 19-year-old freshman film studies major, says despite Obama’s early hardships that he will continue to support Obama throughout his term.
“Overall, for his first year he was put in a hard position,” Molton said. “Bush had no economic issues when he was first elected. Right now Obama is trying to get it all down. He’s not going to be successful in everything he does.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Rose Heaphy at Josephine.heaphy@colorado.edu.
