What They Told Us: Reviewing Key Polls the week of June 14 - 20.

Much of the action was overseas this past week, with Americans assessing their place in the world amidst global events beyond their control.
Protests over a disputed presidential election flared up in Iran, and a plurality of U.S. voters (43%) say President Obama has wisely kept the United States out of the spat so far. But 35% agree with Senator John McCain that the president has not been aggressive enough in supporting Iranian reformers.
Voters are more concerned about North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and its long-range missile capabilities. Now North Korea has passed Iran to become the country voters view as the biggest threat to U.S. national security.
Even though U.S. troops are actually on the ground fighting in Afghanistan, voters for now rule out the idea of negotiating directly with the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban to bring the war to a close. Voters also feel more strongly than ever that the president will have to send more U.S. troops there.
Despite Obama’s well-received outreach speech to Muslims in Egypt recently, voters are even more conflicted about America’s relationship with the Muslim world. Thirty-two percent (32%) say America’s relationship with the Muslim world will get better in the next year, while 28% say it will get worse.
They’re just as conflicted over America’s future place in the world. Only 31% of voters believe that the United States will be the most powerful nation in the world at the end of the 21st century. Thirty-five percent (35%) disagree and 34% are not sure.
Clearly, much of this sentiment is fed by ongoing economic difficulties on the home front. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that they will be personally impacted by the closing of General Motors and Chrysler dealerships across the country as part of the ongoing bankruptcies of those two companies. The federal government has a major say in both automakers because of those bankruptcy plans and many members of Congress are complaining about the dealership closings, but 72% of Americans say the companies and not the government should decide which dealers to close.
Most Americans continue to think that the government will do a worse job running a business than private investors.
Registering the same opposition they’ve had to the auto bailouts for months, 80% of voters want the government to sell its stake in GM and Chrysler as soon as possible. Most adults in Michigan (69%) share that belief.
Like the auto bailouts, health care reform as mandated by the policymakers in Washington, D.C. is coming full speed ahead, whether most voters like it or not.
The president is now aggressively campaigning to build support for the creation of a government-run health insurance company to compete with private insurers. Forty-one percent (41%) of Americans think a public insurance option is a good idea, but just as many (41%) disagree.
Obama agreed with the American Medical Association on Monday that tort reform needs to be part of any health care reform effort to keep costs down. Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters say it is too easy to sue a doctor for medical malpractice in the United States today. Forty-four percent (44%) favor a cap on jury awards in such cases. Maybe that’s because most voters think lawyers get more of the money than defendants do from malpractice lawsuits.
Americans are evenly divided on the urgency for moving ahead with health care reform right now, given the state of the U.S. economy. Forty-four percent say the Obama administration should wait on health care reform until the economy improves, but 43% say health care reform should move ahead right now.
Still, Americans' pessimism about their financial security is slowing, according to the latest COUNTRY Financial Security Index(R) for June.
However, the Rasmussen Consumer and Investor Indexes, which measure daily confidence, continue to seesaw as they have in recent months, with no clear trend evident at this time.
Obama’s ratings slipped slightly at week’s end in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll, but the president continues to remain more popular than many of his policies.
The key political news of the week came from Pennsylvania, with the release of early numbers on what is surely to be one of next year’s most closely watched Senate races. Longtime Republican Senator Arlen Specter, who recently switched parties to improve his chances of reelection, leads Congressman Joe Sestak by 19 percentage points in an early look at the 2010 Democratic Senatorial Primary in the Keystone State. Likely Republican nominee Pat Toomey trails both Specter and Sestak in potential match-ups for next year’s Senate showdown in Pennsylvania.
In other polls last week:
-- Perceptions of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and her prospects for confirmation as the nation’s next Supreme Court justice have changed little over the past couple of weeks.
-- The federal Food and Drug Administration will soon have unprecedented ability to regulate the making and marketing of tobacco products. Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans say more government regulation of tobacco is at least somewhat likely to reduce the number of smokers in this country.
-- Forty-two percent (42%) of voters now believe human activity is the cause of global warming, while 40% say it is caused by long-term planetary trends.
-- Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters now say the United States is heading in the right direction. But most voters (58%) say the nation is heading down the wrong track.
-- Democratic and Republican candidates are tied for the second straight week in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot. Thirty-nine percent (39%) would vote for their district’s Democratic congressional candidate while 39% would choose the Republican.
-- The vast majority of Americans drive to work, but even the threat of higher gas prices doesn’t seem to be encouraging them much to carpool, take public transportation or buy an energy-efficient hybrid car.
-- Only 16% of Americans say they are more likely to get a flu shot this year because of the outbreak of swine flu.
-- The feud between late-night talk show host David Letterman and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is no laughing matter. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (64%) say it’s inappropriate for comedians like Letterman to joke about the children of public figures.
-- With Father's Day this weekend, the overwhelming majority of Americans remain quite clear that being a dad is serious business. Three-out-of-four (75%) American adults say being a father is the most important role a man can fill in today’s world.