Poll: Obama gets high leadership marks

WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- President-elect Barack Obama's leadership is rated as high as President George Bush's was after the 2001 terrorist attacks, poll results indicate.

The CNN-Opinion Research Corp. poll indicates 76 percent of Americans questioned said they thought Obama is a strong, decisive leader.

"That's the best number an incoming president has gotten on that dimension since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said of the results released Wednesday. "The public's rating of his leadership skills is already as high as George W. Bush's was after (Sept. 11, 2001) and easily beats the numbers that both Bush and Bill Clinton got at the start of their first terms in office."

Eight in 10 people surveyed said Obama inspires confidence, can get things done and is tough enough to be president, the survey said.

The 67 percent of those polled who say they admire Obama -- his worst rating in the poll -- is about the same as the highest rating Bush earned just after he took office in 2001, CNN said.

The CNN-Opinion Research Corp. telephone survey was conducted Dec 19-21, with 1,013 adults.The survey's margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.