Its surely is merry Christmas for Barack Obama with Santa raining goodies, this time in the form of an all time high rating of 82 per cent Americans approving his handling of presidential transition.Obama's approval is higher than George W Bush's 65 per cent approval rating during his transition eight years ago with Bill Clinton at 67 percent in 1992.Less than a month to go before Obama assumes office in the teeth of a looming recession, a CNN Opinion Research Poll released on Wednesday shows that more than eight in 10 or 82 per cent of the respondents approve of the way he is handling his presidential transition.That approval is up 3 percentage points from when CNN asked the same question at the beginning of December. Fifteen per cent of those surveyed disapprove of the way the president-elect is handling his transition, down 3 points from the last poll, the CNN said."Barack Obama is having a better honeymoon with the American public than any incoming president in the past three decades. He's putting up better numbers, usually by double digits, than Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or either George Bush on every item traditionally measured in transition polls," Keating Holland, CNN's polling director, said.The findings suggest that 56 per cent of those questioned term Obama's Cabinet nominees as outstanding or above average. Around 32 per cent said they feel the picks have been average while 11 per cent criticised his choices as below average or poor."Obama walks in with nearly twice the support on the economy that President-elect Clinton had in January 1993, and he beats Ronald Reagan as well," Holland adds.The poll was conducted Friday through Sunday, with 1,013 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
