Obama's Approval Ratings Rise

Too bad for President Obama that he couldn't get voters thinking this way last November: 53 percent of Americans now approve of his job as president, according to a new poll of 1,000 Americans by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News. That's an eight percent increase from December. The number of people who disapprove fell to 41 percent from 48 percent. Independents are having their best feelings about the president since August 2009, the last time positive opinions outweighed negative ones among unaffiliated voters. The poll's respondents didn't express much faith in the new GOP House: a quarter said they won't bring the right kind of change to Washington, and 55 percent said they'll be too inflexible dealing with Obama. Fifty-five percent also said they trust Obama to strike the right balance with his opponents.