Although President Barack Obama still is basking in the generally positive public reaction to his State of the Union address, the warm-and-fuzzy glow may soon dissipate predict a couple of hard-nosed pragmatists.
|
| Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney |
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney declared after the chief executive’s address to the joint session of Congress that, although Obama might have good intentions when he calls for creating new jobs, he has no clue about what to do to create a pro-job environment. This devil-in-the-details roadblock will rear its head quickly and derail the president’s momentum of the moment, the former presidential candidate and business leader warns.
Meanwhile, even the very welcome uptick in the nation’s economic engine will return soon to firing on fewer than all cylinders, gravely advises an iconic billionaire investor. Economic recovery in the U.S. is only “temporary,” George Soros warned today.
“We are destined for ‘stop, go’” recovery in the U.S., Soros said in a Bloomberg television interview at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Interest rates in the U.S. will rise and that will hurt growth, he added.
A CBS online poll taken soon after Obama's address recorded an extraordinary 91 per cent approval rating. In a separate CNN poll, 84 per cent approved. "We need to out-innovate, out-educate and outbuild the rest of the world," Obama said in his annual speech, apparently touching the right chords with a lot of Americans seeking a way forward from the dark days of recession.
Obama’s call for a new era of bipartisan support, encouraging Republicans who now control the House to find common solutions to fix the broken economy also was warmly received by a lot of working-class Americans.
Furthermore, 53 percent of investors now view him favorably, up from 49 percent in November, reversing a yearlong deterioration in perceptions of the president, according to a recent poll of 1,000 Bloomberg customers who are investors, traders or analysts.
Romney, who lost the GOP presidential nomination to Sen. John McCain in 2008, told Fox News host Sean Hannity that he had not yet made a decision whether to run in 2012, but he has decided that the president lacks leadership qualities.
“He is trying awfully hard. The problem is, he just doesn’t know what to do,” Romney said. “It’s sad to watch in some respects because obviously we care very deeply with what’s happening with the country, we want people to get back to work.
But he just doesn’t know what the right things are that he’s got to do to make that happen,” Romney said on “Hannity.” “He’s really put in place over the last two years about the most anti-investment, anti-business, anti-jobs regimen that we’ve seen probably in the past couple decades.”
Romney also lambasted Obama, concluding that he failed to address job growth or trimming the deficit sufficiently in his State of the Union. “The president seemed cavalier in dealing with those issues,” he said.
Most national polls have shown Romney as the lead GOP presidential-nomination choice.
A Rasmussen Reports poll last week had 24 percent of likely Republican primary voters picking him as their presidential nominee. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin ran second with 19 percent; followed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with 17 percent; and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 11 percent.