The American public is falling back in love with President Barack Obama, who is suddenly enjoying his highest approval numbers since the honeymoon that was his first year in office.

It’s due, in no small part, to Donald Trump.


The steady climb in Obama’s popularity has closely tracked the rise of Trump, the antithesis of No Drama Obama with his steady stream of derogatory, inflammatory and downright shocking statements throughout this presidential campaign.

The White House on Thursday acknowledged that the record antipathy not only for Trump, but also for Hillary Clinton, is a factor in Obama reaching a job approval rating of 55 percent, a new high for his second term.

“I think the public appraisal of the president’s character is one that even in the most difficult times has been pretty durable, and I think people are reminded of that when they hear some of the rhetoric that’s uttered by the Republican nominee for president,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.

Indeed, Obama joked about that in April, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. His approval ratings had been underwater in December 2015, but by spring, polling aggregators showed that more people thought he was doing a good job than not.

At the dinner, Obama wondered at his own late surge. “I haven’t really done anything differently. So it’s odd. Even my aides can’t explain the rising poll numbers — what has changed, nobody can figure it out.”

Behind him, a picture of Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, the latter still in the running for the GOP nod, flashed across a screen. “Puzzling,” Obama said, to laughter and applause.

“There is probably some truth” to that joke, said Tommy Vietor, a former national security spokesman for Obama, in an interview on Thursday.

“A lot of these questions revolve around character. The guy’s been under the spotlight for eight years, and who you’ve seen is a fundamentally decent man,” Vietor said. He contrasted it with the fact that Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) had to retract an earlier statement that Trump is a “role model” for children earlier this week.

Not surprisingly, Obama’s current and former aides also point to the approval rating as a lagging indicator of Obama’s general awesomeness that the public is again waking up to.

“We really have made critically important progress. The president’s approach has always been to focus on longer-term goals,” Earnest said. “There are situations in which that longer-term focus has had an impact on the numbers reflected in short-term polls. But the president has been willing to sacrifice the hot takes for longer-term results, and after eight years in this office, I think that is a strategy that has strongly benefited the American people, and it’s starting to show up in the polls.”

Earnest pointed to more than six continuous years of rising employment after a severe recession, as well as marked improvements in wage growth and poverty reduction in 2015 as evidence of his long-tail victories.

Of course, there have been plenty of reminders of Obama’s failure to achieve the type of transformation that inspired millions of voters in 2008. Racial unrest after police shootings has punctuated the summer. His diplomacy-focused approach to the Syrian civil war collapsed this week as the U.S. gave up on talks with Russia. And Obamacare — his signature domestic accomplishment — continues to teeter as premiums rise and insurers cut bait; even Bill Clinton called the health care reform program the “craziest system” before clarifying his general support for the overhaul.

There’s also the timing factor — the public has a history of charitable feelings and higher approval ratings for lame-duck presidents.

“It’s a wistfulness,” said Craig Shirley, a presidential historian and biographer of Ronald Reagan, who enjoyed similar approval ratings in his presidency’s twilight. I think it’s people re-evaluating: ‘Oh, he wasn’t such a bad guy.’”

That “forgiving nature,” Shirley added, is uniquely American. “As a person is leaving office and after they’ve left office the American people tend to give … the benefit of the doubt.”

Of course, not every president has benefited from this: At the end of his second term, George W. Bush suffered dismal approval ratings, around 36 percent, as America appeared mired in endless wars. But even Bill Clinton, still relatively fresh off the Monica Lewinsky scandal at the end of his term, had the public backing his job performance: 66 percent approved as he left office.

For most of Obama’s second term — from June 2013 to March 2016 — poll averages calculated by The Huffington Post showed that more people disapproved of his job performance than approved. But the numbers have been on the mend since December 2015, the same time it became clear that Trump was going to be a real contender in the Republican primary.

Thursday’s CNN/ORC poll released Thursday marked the seventh consecutive month that Obama’s job approval number has been above 50 percent in that survey. The figure is up 4 percentage points over the previous CNN/ORC poll from the beginning of September, and is up 11 points from a year ago. In addition to being the high water mark for his second term, the president’s 55 percent approval rating also matches the highest levels he has hit since his first year in the White House.

According to the survey, Obama’s rising job approval rating is thanks mostly to increasingly warm feelings toward him in the past year among Democrats, with whom his approval rating is up 12 points to 89 percent, and independents, whose approval of the president climbed 14 points to 56 percent. Over that same yearlong span, the number of Republican respondents who said they approved of Obama’s job performance climbed just 2 points to 13 percent.

“The country is definitely moving in a more leftward direction than it did in the ’70s and ’80s,” said Shirley. “I don’t know if he’s the beneficiary of that trend, or if he’s the catalyst.”

On top of that, said Shirley, Obama is benefiting from the new low bar set by both of the people running to replace him.

“People are listening to Hillary and to Trump, and by contrast he looks pretty good,” Shirley said. “They’re thinking, ‘Jeez I may have disagreed with this guy, but at least he wiped his feet before he came into the door, at least he knew which silverware to use.’”

Indeed, Obama’s popularity hasn’t translated to Clinton, the person running to preserve and advance his agenda. A CNN poll released earlier this week found that 41 percent of registered voters had a favorable view of her, while 56 percent had an unfavorable view (Trump’s numbers were even worse, with 59 percent unfavorable).

“Part of this is getting out of the daily political to and fro,” Vietor said. That’s a big reason that he’s well-liked, while Clinton is struggling — unfairly — he argued.

“It’s not a coincidence,” Vietor said, that Hillary Clinton’s approval rating was high as she ended her tenure as secretary of state, 69 percent, according to one poll.

“She has been savaged for months over her email, with questions about the foundation,” Vietor said. “The months of allegations and attacks overwhelm the fact that there was no wrongdoing now. That sort of sustained assault on her character is going to have an impact.”

Louis Nelson contributed to this report.