Americans Give Low Ratings and Dire Predictions for Debt-Ceiling Deal

At USA Today, "Poll: Thumbs down on the debt-ceiling deal" (at Memeorandum):

In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken hours after the Senate passed and President Obama signed the deal, 46% disapprove of the agreement; 39% approve. Only one in five see it as a step forward in addressing the federal debt.

The dyspeptic view may reflect less an assessment of the plan's particulars than dismay at the edge-of-a-cliff negotiations to reach it.

"Most people assume that whatever came out of this horrible process was pretty crappy," says Joseph White, a political scientist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland who studies budget policy.

And a surprisingly good discussion at the clip. I'm not familiar with Beverly Gage, but she nails it with her comments on the absurdity of Obamania. And Harvard's David King needs to be fact-checked. He says America hasn't been this polarized since the 1920s, and Judy Woodruff calls him out. He then clarifies with a reference to congressional polarization starting in the 1970s, and that sounds more accurate.