First Lady's Poll Numbers Drop After Spain Vacation

(Aug. 15) -- Michelle Obama may think twice before vacationing in Europe again. While the first lady may have enjoyed her recent luxury trip to the south of Spain with 9-year-old daughter Sasha, it may be the reason her popularity rating has plummeted, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

The survey found that just 50 percent of Americans now have a positive opinion of her, compared to the 64 percent who gave her a thumbs up in a similar April 2009 survey. The First Lady's positive rating is just a few points ahead of her husband's approval figure, which stands at 46 percent.

Much of the drop is thought to be down to her five-day shopping and sightseeing tour of Andalucía, from which she returned last Sunday. That foreign fiesta -- during which she stayed in a five star Costa del Sol hotel, where rooms cost up to $7,000 a night -- provoked considerable anger back home, even though White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the Obamas had paid for all of their personal expenses.

New York Daily News columnist Andrea Tantaros said the trip made her look like a modern-day Marie Antoinette. She noted that Barack and Michelle Obama have asked the country to make sacrifices to get through the tough times, yet "while most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns ... the Obamas don't seem to be heeding their own advice."

Similar criticism was targeted at Nancy Reagan in the 1980s. She was frequently attacked for flouncing around in fancy frocks, buying expensive crockery and holding extravagant parties during the recession -- or, in the words of a 1981 New York Times article "exercising her opulent tastes in an economy that is inflicting hardship on so many."

Unless Michelle Obama starts to polish her public image, the Washington Examiner warns, her popularity rating could soon hit lows not seen since the scandal-tarnished Hillary Clinton years. The former first lady started her time in the White House with a 57 percent positive rating, the paper noted, which dropped to the 40s after the Travelgate scandal and into the 30s with the Whitewater investigation. (No comparable polling exists from the Reagan Administration).

This isn't the first time that the Obamas have found themselves in trouble over their choice of holiday spots. Back in July, conservative critics savaged the first family for trekking to Maine's swanky Bar Harbor, shortly after the president had called on Americans to head to the oil-smothered Gulf Coast.

However, there are signs that the first family has learned from past mistakes: They're spending this weekend splashing around in the waters off Florida.