By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 1/18/11 9:41 AM EST Updated: 1/18/11 7:05 PM EST


Newt Gingrich on Tuesday lavished praise on President Barack Obama - the man whose job he may be after in 2012.

“He’s starting to get a lot of strength back,” Gingrich said of Obama in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,.” noting his Tucson speech and hiring of Chicago powerhouse Bill Daley as the new White Hosue chief of staff.

The former GOP House speaker and possible 2012 contender said he was particularly impressed by the president’s speech in the aftermath of last week’s shooting in Tucson that badly injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others.

“I thought that his speech in Tucson was very effective. It’s what a president should do in a moment like that,” he said.

“I thought it was exactly the right tone for him,” Gingrich added. “The audience wasn’t always the right tone, but the president was and I think that that certainly helped him.”

Gingrich said he thinks Obama “deserves the approval you just showed in your poll,” referring to the Washington Post-ABC News poll released Tuesday morning that had the president’s approval rating at 54 percent and 78 percent of Americans approving of how he handled the shooting.

“I join the 71 percent of Republicans who approved of it,” he said.

Gingrich also gave a thumbs up to Obama’s decision to hire Daley to replace Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff.

“Bill Daley will be an enormous asset,” Gingrich said. “He’s a solid, and confident guy, who understands the business community” and in “the great Chicago tradition, understands getting things done.”

The often outspoken Gingrich, who said he plans to announce whether he’s running for the White House by late February, also had some words of advice for Sarah Palin, a potential opponent in the race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

“I think that she’s got to slow down and think through what she’s saying and how she’s saying it,” he said. “There’s no question that she’s become more controversial, but she is still a phenomenon…. She remains a very formidable person in her own right.”



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