Opinions of President Barack Obama have changed drastically since he took office.
A Pew Research study profiled the change in opinion. In 2008, voters described Obama as inexperienced and young. Those opinions are drastically different in 2012. The most frequently repeated words in the study were “trying” and “failure.”
Mass Communication Professor Rosanne Scholl said the change isn’t surprising. Scholl attributes the change in perspective to time.
“Four years have passed since Obama took office,” she said. “We now have a lot more information about who he is. Obama came in promising change. It was a pretty massive vision. I think a lot of voters have been disappointed.”
Despite attempts to win voters with their policies, many students are interested in Obama and Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney’s personalities.
“I don’t really care about either one’s views,” said Trevor Lopez, undeclared freshman. “Most of the things they talk about won’t affect me. I think their personalities are a lot more important.”
Ashley Reed, biology freshman, agreed.
“Policy is great, but sometimes you can’t implement your policy and get things done,” Reed said. “The recession has taken up all of Obama’s term, he really couldn’t do anything.”
She said personality often helps determine what future decisions will look like. If a president’s term is marred by a crisis, knowing what he or she might do is more important than policy views, Reed said.
Scholl described Obama’s image as being active and energetic.
“We have seen several pictures of him vigorously playing basketball,” Scholl said. “Voters often use personality traits like playing basketball as a shortcut to being informed.”
Lewis Evans, marketing sophomore, responded with “really rich” and “not interesting” when asked about Romney.
Presidential candidates often try to market themselves as middle-class Americans. When Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, he appeared on Saturday Night Live playing the saxophone. Another common example is presidential candidates throwing the first pitch at baseball games.
Romney and his wife appeared on “Live with Kelly and Michael” last week to market his softer side. On the show, Romney admitted he is a fan of Snooki from MTV’s show “Jersey Shore.”
“I’m kind of a Snooki fan,” he said, “Look how tiny she’s gotten. She’s lost weight. She’s energetic. Just her spark plug personality is kind of fun.”
President Obama is also beginning to appear on talk shows in order to appeal to the electorate. He appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman” on Tuesday.
Anthropology freshman Regina Schneider said personality may decide the presidential race among the millennial generation.
“Young people just want to elect someone like us, not some rich person that is out of touch with the world,” Schneider said. “If they do things that we do, it makes them more appealing.”
