President Obama begins his second term in office Monday on a high — one tempered, however, by the experiences of his first four years and an awareness of how violently the political pendulum can swing.
At the time of his 2008 election win, some Obama supporters spoke about him in quasi-messianic terms. His first inauguration brought an enormous crowd to Washington’s National Mall and a broader excitement to the nation at large. Polling at the time gave Obama an approval rating of around 80 percent.
But the depth of the nation’s economic troubles, a battle over healthcare reform and a large, if nebulous, sense that Obama had not fully lived up to his billing eroded the president’s popularity over the next couple of years.
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