Photograph by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street, London, at the start of her third term in office.

With the passing of Margaret Thatcher, the only female prime minister in the United Kingdom’s history, the folks at the Pew Research Center are pointing out to public expectations about the election of a female American president.

The last time Pew surveyed, two years ago, 89 percent of those asked said a woman will probably or definitely be elected in the U.S. within 40 years.

That was up from 80 percent in May of 1999.

Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination may have had something to do with that growing perception.

Clinton’s 2016 campaign — oh, wait, she hasn’t announced yet — could push that perception higher.

If Thatcher was the Iron Lady, Clinton will need a handle, too.

See Bloomberg Businessweek’s Josh Green on what Thatcher taught Clinton.

It’s also worth noting:

Re Margaret Thatcher, in 2010, most Americans predicted a woman president by 2050. But only 28% saw it as definite.pewrsr.ch/X0RWMx

— Carroll Doherty (@CarrollDoherty) April 8, 2013

Original post is Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton: Name? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Speaker of the House John Boehner speaks during a press briefing March 14, 2013 at the Capitol in Washington, DC.

Updated at 11:30 am EDT

House Speaker John Boehner has given at the office.

And he’s not giving any more on taxes, he reasserted today.

The Ohio Republican, in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz airing on “This Week” today, said that any talk of including new tax revenue as part of a so-called grand bargain with the White House on taming the federal deficit is “over.”

“The president believes that we have to have more taxes from the American people. We’re not going to get very far,” Boehner said. “The president got his tax hikes on January 1. The talk about raising revenue is over. It’s time to deal with the spending problem.”

Like the president, who sat for an interview with ABC News last week, the speaker says the United States does not face an immediate debt problem. However, the White House maintains that any effort to rein in the deficit should include a “balanced” approach of tax revenue and spending cuts.

“We do not have an immediate debt crisis – but we all know that we have one looming,” he said. “And we have one looming because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form. They’re going to go bankrupt.”

“Hope springs eternal,” Boehner said of a possible budget deal. He maintains that he has a “very good relationship” with the president, “absolutely” trusts him and considers the “charm offensive” that Obama has mounted in the past two weeks — dining with Republican senators and meeting with both parties’ caucuses in both chambers at the Capitol — a “good thing.”

“It’s always a good thing to engage in more conversation, engage more members in the conversation that have not been involved up to this point,” he said.

Asked about the rifts within his own party, Boehner said:

“There’s nothin’ wrong with the principles of our party. But Republicans have not done as an effective job as we should in terms of talking about our principles in terms that average people can appreciate — why balancing the budget, as an example, would be good for American families. We’ve got to do a better job of helping people understand what our principles are in terms that they deal with every day. ”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was ready with another take on that question today:

– 72 percent of Americans “Disapprove of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their jobs.” According to a Washington Post ABC News poll, 72 percent of poll respondents disapprove of Congressional Republicans.”

– 62 percent of Americans say the Republican Party is “Out of Touch,” 52 Percent Say Republicans Are “Too Extreme.” According to a February 2013 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center: “Sixty-two percent of adults say the GOP is out of touch with the American people, 56 percent say it’s not open to change and 52 percent say it’s too extreme, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday.”

Original post is Boehner: Tax Talk ‘Over’ by Political Capital.

Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

President Barack Obama waits for a heavy rain to pass before crossing West Executive Avenue from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to the West Wing of the White House, March 12, 2013.

President Barack Obama’s approval rating has dropped below 50 percent in a new survey, as the public sours on Washington’s handling of the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that went into effect at the beginning of the month.

The president’s approval rating has declined to 48 percent, down from a pre-inauguration high of 54 percent, according to a poll released today by Greenberg, Quinlan and Rosner Research. Forty-nine percent of respondents voiced disapproval of the president, according to the survey of 950 voters taken March 9-12.

Congressional Republicans earn even lower marks.

They have a 27 percent approval rate and a 66 percent disapproval rate in this survey.

Still, that shows an improvement from their 23 percent approval rate and 73 percent disapproval number in the last Greenberg survey, released Jan. 14.

“Be careful of making too much of any individual polls or even a series of polls,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said today. “When Washington is dysfunctional everyone in Washington looks bad.”

The president’s decline, evident in a pair of other public polls, comes as the economy is showing some signs of strength.

Sales by U.S. retailers climbed twice as much as forecast in February, showing improving job prospects are helping consumers nd the economy overcome higher taxes and gasoline prices, according to figures released by the Commerce Department today.

The unemployment rate last month dropped to 7.7 percent, the lowest since December 2008, according to the Labor Department.

Obama’s approval rating stood at 50 percent in an ABC News-Washington Poll released today, down five points from a 55 percent approval in January, before his inauguration. The president’s 18-point advantage on Republicans over handling the economy has shrunk to 4 points, according to the poll.

With approval of Congress at 16 percent in the survey, Carney questioned the new value of focusing on the president’s numbers.

“The news of that poll was that the president was at 50 percent, not that the Republican Party had a disapproval rate in he mid-70s,” he said.

A McClatchy-Marist poll released yesterday gave the president a 45 percent approval rating among registered voters and a 48 percent disapproval score, marking the first time his disapproval has been higher than his approval rating since November 2011.

The McClatchy survey also noted that 46 percent of those survey blamed Republicans and 37 percent for letting the $85 billion in automatic spending cuts known as sequestration take effect.

Original post is Obama Slips Below 50% — White House: ‘Everyone Looks Bad’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

President Barack Obama walks to the White House, with just three days until the $85 billion in reductions for this year are scheduled to start.

Two surveys out today show Americans siding with President Barack Obama over congressional Republicans on how best to address the automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1.

A Washington Post/ABC News poll taken Feb. 20-24 showed 67 percent disapproving of the way congressional Republicans were handling federal spending, 15 points worse than the 52 percent disapproving of Obama. The poll showed 43 percent approving of the way Obama was handling spending and 26 percent saying the same about Republicans in Congress. The survey of 1,021 adults had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Republicans didn’t fare any better in a Feb. 21-24 survey by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal. Asked about the most important compromise Obama and Republicans should strike, respondents chose as No. 1 eliminating tax loopholes for the wealthy, which the president has proposed to offset the effects of the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration. Just 29 percent said they agreed with most of the congressional Republican agenda, while 57 percent disagreed. The poll showed 45 percent supporting most of what Obama has proposed and 46 percent disagreeing. That survey of 1,000 adults had a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.

Obama and congressional Democrats have proposed offsetting some of the spending cuts with higher taxes on wealthy Americans, primarily by closing loopholes that benefit them. House Republicans last year voted to offset defense cuts by reducing federal funding for food stamps and other domestic programs and remain opposed to higher taxes.

Original post is Polls Backing Obama on Sequestration by Political Capital.

Photograph by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images

A poll volunteer checks a voter’s ID in Cleveland, Ohio.

Representative Dina Titus of Nevada calls it “the renewed civil rights issue.”

Titus is one of more than 165 Democratic members of the U.S. House who have signed onto legislation, introduced by civil rights icon John Lewis of Georgia, to provide for same-day voter registration and early-voting periods. The aim is to avoid a repeat of the long lines at the polls that frustrated many voters during the Nov. 6  presidential election.

Democrats are using the bill to try to change the narrative on voting rights. Efforts in some Republican-controlled state legislatures have focused on enacting voter-identification laws in order to curb what proponents say is voter fraud — even as studies have shown that the problem is rare.

“There are some in the Republican Party who feel the only way they can win elections is by suppressing the vote,” said Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat and a co-sponsor of Lewis’s measure. “In this country, it’s easier to get a gun than to vote.”

Democrats say they are reaching out to Republicans, who control the House and can block legislation originating in the Senate. So far, there is no hint of bipartisanship. Republicans, such as Representative Candice Miller of Michigan, who used to run elections as secretary of state, said the federal government shouldn’t be telling states how to handle their responsibilities.

“There are no one-size-fits-all solutions,” she said. “Therefore, forced changes to state election procedures, especially the sweeping changes proposed in this legislation, are of particular concern.”

Original post is Democrats Seek to Change the Narrative on Voting Rights by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivers her farewell address to the staff at the State Department on Feb. 1, 2013 in Washington.

Hillary Clinton left Foggy Bottom with higher approval ratings than her former boss, President Barack Obama, and a bunch of politicians mentioned along with her as potential contenders for the White House in 2016.

That’s according to a Quinnipiac University poll out today.

The survey gave Clinton, who lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Obama in 2008, an approval rating of 61 percent, with 34 percent viewing her unfavorably.

Obama had a 51 percent approval rating and a 46 percent disapproval rating, and Vice President Joe Biden was viewed favorably, by 46 percent to 41 percent.  Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, called Clinton “easily the most popular actor on the American political stage today.”

On the Republican side, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida had an approval rating of 27 percent, with 15 percent disapproving and 57 percent saying they didn’t know enough about him to form an opinion. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the 2008 vice-presidential nominee, was in negative territory, with 36 percent viewing him unfavorably and 34 percent holding a favorable opinion.

Original post is Clinton Left State Higher-Rated Than President Who Put Her There by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

A shopper organizes his cash at a Best Buy Co. store in Peoria.

There are indicators, and there are indicators.

One of the leading indicators of consumer confidence, the Conference Board, reported today that confidence reached its lowest level in more than a year in January as renewed payroll taxes took a bigger bite out of American paychecks.

The Conference Board’s index decreased to 58.6, its weakest level since November 2011, as Bloomberg’s Jeanna Smialek reports.

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index also dropped in the week ended Jan. 20 to the lowest level since early October as Americans’ concerns about the economy mounted, she notes.

Then comes the Gallup organization with a report today that “Americans were more positive about the economy last week than they have been at any time since Gallup began tracking economic confidence daily in January 2008. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index improved to -9, from -13 the prior week and -22 during the last week of December. ”

And this: “The current weekly average spanning Jan. 21-27, 2013, reflects the continuation of an upward climb that has been ongoing throughout January, as major U.S. stock markets have also soared past five-year highs.”

Gallup’s Lymari Morales writes: “Americans’ current views of the U.S. economy clearly indicate a new wave of optimism during the start of 2013. Americans are now more positive about the economy — taking into account current conditions and the outlook for the future — than at any time since the recession and global financial crisis. This likely reflects a combination of factors, including the recent surge in U.S. stock markets, Democrats’ becoming more confident about the economy after the U.S. presidential election, and the lifting of the uncertainty that surrounded the election and the fiscal cliff budget negotiations toward the end of 2012.

Gallup’s survey of 3,546 adults run Jan. 21-27 has a possible margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Gallup, apparently, is talking to happier people.

Which may be of little comfort.

Original post is Economic Confidence: Gallup Survey Against Grain of Consumer Indices by Political Capital.

Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton takes her seat on on Capitol Hill in Washington, on Jan. 23, 2013, prior to testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the deadly September attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Updated at 11:05 and 11:20 am EST

Hillary Clinton is taking what could be her final public stage for a few years, today facing questions about what she knew and when she knew it about the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that claimed the life of the American ambassador.

She stands, if not in the eyes of Republicans ready to grill her today, high in the eyes of the American public:

Sixty seven percent of Americans view the soon-retiring secretary of state in a favorable light, according to an ABC News/Washington Poll released today  – “numerically a new high in her long career in the public spotlight,” ABC notes.

That puts her, in context, on a higher platform than Vice President Joe Biden, viewed favorably by 48 percent.

The outgoing secretary of state also outperforms the vice president in intensity of sentiment in the poll run by Langer Research  Associates. More than twice as many Americans see Clinton “strongly” favorably as those who see her strongly unfavorably – 35 versus. 14 percent - while Biden breaks even, 22 versus. 23 percent, in this measure.

Which is not a bad place to be for a politician who has served as the nation’s chief diplomat for four years, served as a senator from New York for a term and first lady in the White House for two terms — a politician widely regarded as the Democrat best positioned to make a bid for the presidency in 2016, should she decide to accept the mission.

It’s unlikely that Clinton’s appearances before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this morning and House Foreign Affairs Committee this afternoon will do anything to change that ranking in public opinion — as her successor, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, prepares for his Senate confirmation hearing tomorrow.

Senate Committee Chairman Bob Menendez of New Jersey today told the departing secretary, making her last major appearance before the committee (she will return tomorrow to introduce Kerry for his confirmation hearing): “You have changed the face of America abroad… the most traveled secretary in history.”

“I know you will not go gently from the world stage,” Menendez told a smiling Clinton at the start of the first hearing on Capitol Hill this morning.

And his words proved prescient.

Clinton dismissed three of the most pointed criticisms of her handling of the episode after the attack as only an outgoing secretary might address the Senate:

“What difference, at this point, does it make?” Clinton sharply asked Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, probing about what was known at the time of the circumstances surrounding the attack.

And to Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and 2008 nominee for president who has been most outspoken in his criticism of the Obama administration for its handling of the affair, Clinton calmly said: “We just have a disagreement.”

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said his problem with the Benghazi affair is that people responsible for a failure of security haven’t been fired: “I would have relieved you of your post.”

“With your leaving, you accept culpability for the worst tragedy since 9/11,” Paul told Clinton, criticizing her for not seeing warning-cables beforehand. “It was a failure of leadership not to be involved. So, I think it’s good that you’re accepting responsibility, because no one else is.”

“I am the secretary of state,” she said, and the independent investigation of Benghazi was conducted impartially and outside of the political realm. “I believe in taking responsibility.”

Original post is Hillary Clinton Not Going ‘Gently From the World Stage’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by George Frey/Bloomberg

A man talks on a cell phone while carrying a semi-automatic assault rifle he is trying to sell at the Rocky Mountain Gun Show in Sandy, Utah, on Jan. 5, 2013.

That’s the percentage of Americans who say that President Barack Obama’s proposals to curb gun violence are “about right,” according to the Pew Research Center.

That’s a plurality position in the survey taken Jan. 17-20. Thirty-one percent of respondents, including a majority of Republicans, said Obama’s gun proposals “go too far,” while 13 percent said his proposals don’t go far enough. The remaining 17 percent didn’t answer the question or said they didn’t know.

Obama announced 23 executive actions on Jan. 16 to reduce gun violence, including some that are designed to streamline access to government data for background checks. The president also wants Congress to ban high-capacity magazines and semiautomatic assault-style weapons. A 1994 ban on certain types of assault-style weapons expired in 2004.

The Pew survey underscores how Americans are divided on how to curb gun violence, more than a month after a shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, killed 20 elementary school students and six staff members.

Any proposals to restrict gun ownership will be opposed by the National Rifle Association and are unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House. New regulations on gun ownership face an uncertain future in the Senate, which includes some members from the Democratic majority who are up for re-election in rural states with large populations of gun-owners.

“Decades of congressional inaction on gun-control measures suggests Obama’s agenda could easily be undercut,” Bloomberg News reporters Heidi Przybyla and Lisa Lerer wrote on Jan. 17.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 39 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Barrett Stinson/The Grand Island Independent/AP Photo

One of two police officers carrying an AR-15 assault rifle stands guard at the west entrance of Grand Island Senior High School, in Grand Island, Neb.

Updated at 12:10 pm EST

The White House scolded the National Rifle Association today for an ad calling the president an “elitist hypocrite” on gun control because his children have armed protection.

Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, called the ad “repugnant and cowardly.”

“Most Americans agree that a president’s children should not be used as pawns in a political fight,” Carney said in a statement. “But to go so far as to make the safety of the president’s children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”

On the day that President Barack Obama announced a sweeping agenda of 23 executive actions and more congressional proposals to curb gun violence, the NRA, which is proposing armed guards at the nation’s schools as an alternative, has released a video-ad calling the president an “elitist hypocrite” because his children are protected.

The narrator of the ad, appearing at the NRA Web-site and on the Sportsman Channel, does not identify the president’s two school-age daughters by name, but does ask this:

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools, when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools?”

Obama’s children attend the private Sidwell Friends school in Washington, yet it is not the school that provides their primary protection. The family of the president is protected by the Secret Service. The girls have been spotted in such venues as trick or treating in Washington escorted by tall men with radios in their ears.

The ad, which closes with images of the assault weapons that the president proposed banning today at an announcement of his agenda at a White House annex, contends that Obama demands that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, yet “he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

In the aftermath of the shootings of 20 children and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre proposed armed guarding of all the nation’s schools. The only way to “stop bad guys with guns,” he said, is “good guys with guns.”

The NRA has suffered a certain loss of public approval in national opinion polls during the past month, while support for an assault weapons ban has increased in those surveys. The shooter in Newtown used a semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle with oversized ammo clips to riddle with bullets the first graders slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

As Obama and Vice President Joe Biden launch a campaign for gun control today, the gun lobby is mounting its own media assault: Sportsman Channel and the NRA “are bringing the NRA’s popular talk-radio show NRANEWS Cam & Co. to television every weekday live from 5-6pm ET beginning Jan. 15,” the organization announced. “Hosted by Cam Edwards, and airing live from the NRANEWS Studios in Washington, D.C., NRANEWS Cam & Co. will be the one and only news-talk series on television that can authoritatively address the issues that are vital to America’s more than 80 million sportsmen and sportswomen. ”

Like the assault weapons ban.

The weapons pictured in the NRA ad about the president’s children, closing with: `Protection for their kids, and gun-free zones for ours.”

Robert Gibbs, a former press secretary for Obama, called the NRA ad “disgusting” today in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” It is the sort of ad, he said, that political activists make in the middle of the night after some excessive drinking. Usually, he said, people arrive in the morning with a more sober eye and censor it.

Roger Runningen and Margaret Talev contributed. 

Original post is White House Scolds NRA for Ad Challenging Obama Over Children by Political Capital.