President Barack Obama defended his economic policies Tuesday night in the second news conference of his presidency.

The president also tried to cool the fires he originally stoked over the AIG bonus fiasco.

AIG has already been bailed out by the government four times with a price tag of more than $180 billion.

With executives getting multi-million dollar bonuses, the pressure has been on the White House and Congress to retaliate but has the economic downturn taken its toll on Obama's popularity?

A look at the latest Zogby Poll shows that 45 percent of likely voters say the country is headed in the right direction. That is a five percent jump from earlier this month and a 14-point increase since the beginning of the year.

However, President's Obama's approval ratings tell a different story. Just 49 percent say the president is doing an excellent or good job, while 50 percent rate his performance as fair or poor. These numbers are down from the beginning of the month, but what does this mean?

John Zogby of Utica is president and CEO of Zogby International. He and his team have been tracking public opinion around the world for 25 years.

On Tuesday he spoke to the Rochester Rotary. He says given the fact that the nation's crises are as enormous as they are, President Obama is holding his own and it's pretty amazing the president is at 49 percent.

He says Obama has accomplished a lot - he passed a stimulus plan, a massive spending plan, restored embryonic stem cell research and moved to close Guantanamo Bay detention center,  but he has made mistakes. Because he campaigned on bipartisanship, he should have taken the lead on the stimulus package rather than turning it over to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Zogby thinks Obama should not have gone on The Tonight Show last week.  That all said, Obama continues to have likeability and credibility.

"What Americans are saying is not that they've given up hope, it's 50-50," explained Zogby.  "It's that they don't have confidence right now because he and Congress have slipped back into business as usual."

Zogby says even if President Obama sinks a little lower in the polls, he is still polling better than the republicans.

In his second primetime address Tuesday night, Zogby thought President Obama needed to remind America he's only been president for a short time. Then, tell Americans what the stimulus package will mean, because right now it just seems like spending.

Zogby said Obama should have said, "Look we've passed this legislation. Legislation takes time for implementation but trust me on these dates you are going to see orange cones, you're going to see concrete barriers, you're going to see computers delivered to classroom, you're going to see hard hats out on the highways, you're going to see a stimulus check. He should have bench mark calendar dates, ball park dates that people can look for because this right now, the stimulus package to most Americans looks like too much spending, nothing tangible in terms of receiving. He needs to remind people that the receiving is right around the corner and I think he's done a good job. Not that it is going to turn the economy around overnight - it's not. It's probably just going to stem the free fall more than anything else. But he's go to relate it to what it means to average voters."

Obama needs to tell people very soon it will mean road construction, computers in classrooms and extra money in your paycheck.

For Rochester, N.Y. news go to our website www.whec.com.