Voters Narrowly Split on Whether US Would Have Been Better Off With McCain

Looks like the first anniversary of Obama's Immaculate Inauguration won't include as much joy and worship as the White House might have liked:

A new sheaf of opinion polls show Americans sharply divided on President Barack Obama's first year in office, as his ratings on key issues like health care and the economy hit new lows.

Polling also suggests independent voters are turning away from Obama as he nears the anniversary of his January 20 inauguration -- though in a sign of hope for his administration, he remains more popular than his policies.

In a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, US voters were split 45-45 on whether Obama's first year was a success or failure.

When voters were asked in a CNN/Opinion Research survey published on Tuesday to rate Obama's performance since taking office, 48 percent judged it a failure, and 47 percent saw a success....

A CBS News poll showed Obama's job approval rating at 46 percent, marking the first time he had polled below 50 percent in the survey.

The CNN poll meanwhile showed Obama's approval rating at 51 percent -- but that was down three points in a month.

Quinnipiac had Obama's job approval/disapproval split at 45 percent for the first time.

"President Obama's report card from the American people on his first year in office is a mixed one," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

"He gets better grades on his personal qualities than his policies."

In the Quinnipiac poll, there was a narrow margin among respondents, 35-37 percent on whether the United States would have been better off had Obama's Republican opponent John McCain won last year's election.

Certainly McCain would not have pushed socialized health care and perhaps wouldn't have allowed such a useless stimulus bill, but I'll bet if McCain had won we'd have some sort of cap-and-tax global warming legislation through the Congress by now. He had drunk the global warming Kool-Aid and probably would have supported that nonsense, which might well have passed before the whole ClimateGate thing broke.

And with McCain we wouldn't have had the voter uprising that created the Tea Parties and the very tough environment the Democrats are facing right now. Democrats might have held the governorships in VA and NJ without those motivated anti-Democrat voters among both GOP and independents.

It would be a different country right now, that's for sure.