The Prom King Presidency, or...

Cut him some slack: he's never held a job this long in his life.

//The problem with this is that Mr. Obama is disengaging (a) after having done extraordinary damage to America and (b) at a moment when the world is convulsing because of the void left by Obama’s (and therefore America’s) diffidence and passivity. An increasingly insouciant commander-in-chief is not what’s needed at this particular time, given the multiplying threats and increasing disorder in the world.

It’s very much beginning to look at if Barack Obama saw the presidency as primarily a way to satisfy his narcissism. What’s happened instead is the presidency is breaking him, even as he is breaking the nation.//

Like laws...

...consideration is for the little people.

Obama has been more than 35 hours late in 2014.

President Obama has a problem with being late. This is pretty well-documented. A Google search for "obama always late" offers a multitude of articles. When he is late to an event, as he often is -- and was by more than an hour on Wednesday -- the hashtag #whyobamaislate often pops up on Twitter offering various "funny" explanations for the delay.

We decided to try to figure out just how late Obama actually is. The way we did that was pretty simple: Every time the president gives prepared public remarks, they are posted on the White House Web site. And, importantly, they're time-stamped. When he spoke at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit earlier Wednesday, he started at 10:17 a.m. But those remarks were supposed to begin at 10 a.m., according to his public schedule. Ergo, Obama was 17 minutes late. We pulled every time-stamped speech in 2014 and compared it to the schedule. Not everything on his schedule had time-stamped remarks, and vice versa, so we only included those events for which we had both pieces of data.

What we found: Obama has been a cumulative 2,121 minutes late to events in 2014. That's 35 hours, 21 minutes -- or almost a day and a half -- that his audiences have been waiting for him to speak. That's for a lot of events, though. On average, he is 11 minutes late to scheduled speaking appointments.

Give him a break...

...being President is the longest he's held any job.

//"Dem Party is F****d," wrote a Democratic consultant with strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill during the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act website.

A Democratic House member whose endorsement in 2008 helped lift the Obama candidacy told me in January, "He's bored and tired of being president, and our party is paying the price."

"Talented guy but no leader," said a Democratic lobbyist and former member of Congress in March. "If he could govern half as well as he campaigns, he'd be a good-to-great president."

Questioning why the Veterans Affairs Department hadn't been overhauled months ago as promised by Obama, a senior White House official conceded privately to me, "We don't do the small stuff well. And the small stuff is the important stuff."

The level of disquiet among Democrats reminds me of President George W. Bush's second term, when my best sources were frustrated Republicans. (Interviewing Republicans today is like interviewing Democrats in 2006: predictably partisan, rarely insightful.)

Few frustrated Democrats are willing to complain openly. I grant them anonymity, which creates a problem: Readers, for good reason, don't trust anonymous quotes. One way to avoid deluging readers with unnamed Democrats is for me to digest their complaints along with other reporting to shape my columns and tweets. Like this one://

It is a good thing that we have a Nobel Prize winner rather than that cowboy...

...or are potential allies would be laughing at us.

English laugh at Obama's "delusions of grandeur" in comparing Syria to World War II.

Which ties perfectly in to Victor Davis Hanson's observations:

1) His inclination is to damn straw men, blame others for his self-inflicted errors, and spike the ball when he should keep quiet and become modest (cf. the bin Laden raid). So in Syria we heard the same old, same old: A host of bad guys, here and abroad, wants to do nothing. Obama alone has the vision and moral compass to restore global and U.S. credibility through his eloquence; but the world disappointed him and is now at fault for establishing red lines that it won’t enforce: He came into the world to save the world, but the world rejected him.

After five years of this, the world caught on, and sees juvenile and narcissistic petulance in lieu of statesmanship—and unfortunately a sinister Putin takes great delight in reminding 7 billion people of this fact almost daily. In terms of geostrategic clout, Obama has nullified the power of his eleven aircraft-carrier battle groups, Putin through his shrewd insight and ruthless calculation of human nature, has added five where they didn’t exist.

2) Obama thinks in an untrained manner and for all the talk of erudition and education seems bored and distracted—and it shows up in the most critical moments. Had he wished to stop authoritarians, prevent bloodshed and near genocide, and foster true reform in the Middle East, there were plenty of prior, but now blown occasions: a) the “good” war in Afghanistan could have earned his full attention; b) the “bad” Iraq War was won and needed only a residual force to monitor the Maliki government and protect Iraq airspace and ensure quiet; c) the green revolution in Iran was in need of moral support; d) Qaddafi could have been continually pressured for further reform rather than bombed into oblivion; e) postwar Libya needed U.S. leadership to ensure that “lead from behind” did not lead to the present version of Somalia and the disaster in Benghazi; e) long ago, the president could have either kept quiet about Syria or acted on his threats when Assad was tottering and the resistance was less Islamist; f) he could have warned the one vote/one time Muslim Brotherhood early on not to do what everyone in the world knew it would surely do; g) he need not have issued tough serial deadlines to Iran that we have not really enforced and probably have no intention of enforcing.

Well, to be fair, what was there in his resume that led us to believe that he would be competent?

Victor Davis Hanson writes:

1) His inclination is to damn straw men, blame others for his self-inflicted errors, and spike the ball when he should keep quiet and become modest (cf. the bin Laden raid). So in Syria we heard the same old, same old: A host of bad guys, here and abroad, wants to do nothing. Obama alone has the vision and moral compass to restore global and U.S. credibility through his eloquence; but the world disappointed him and is now at fault for establishing red lines that it won’t enforce: He came into the world to save the world, but the world rejected him.

After five years of this, the world caught on, and sees juvenile and narcissistic petulance in lieu of statesmanship—and unfortunately a sinister Putin takes great delight in reminding 7 billion people of this fact almost daily. In terms of geostrategic clout, Obama has nullified the power of his eleven aircraft-carrier battle groups, Putin through his shrewd insight and ruthless calculation of human nature, has added five where they didn’t exist.

2)  Obama thinks in an untrained manner and for all the talk of erudition and education seems bored and distracted—and it shows up in the most critical moments. Had he wished to stop authoritarians, prevent bloodshed and near genocide, and foster true reform in the Middle East, there were plenty of prior, but now blown occasions: a) the “good” war in Afghanistan could have earned his full attention; b) the “bad” Iraq War was won and needed only a residual force to monitor the Maliki government and protect Iraq airspace and ensure quiet; c) the green revolution in Iran was in need of moral support; d) Qaddafi could have been continually pressured for further reform rather than bombed into oblivion; e) postwar Libya needed U.S. leadership to ensure that “lead from behind” did not lead to the present version of Somalia and the disaster in Benghazi; e) long ago, the president could have either kept quiet about Syria or acted on his threats when Assad was tottering and the resistance was less Islamist; f) he could have warned the one vote/one time Muslim Brotherhood early on not to do what everyone in the world knew it would surely do; g) he need not have issued tough serial deadlines to Iran that we have not really enforced and probably have no intention of enforcing.

Too good not to post:

Glen Reynolds writes:

//JAMES TARANTO: Obama’s Cakewalk: The Syria debacle and the lessons of Iraq.

The appeal of Barack Obama in 2008 lay not only in his status as the only serious Democratic candidate to have opposed the war from the outset, but also in the belief that his conciliatory rhetoric, along with his “multicultural” identity (black, with Muslim ancestors and an Arabic middle name to boot!) would “restore our moral standing,” as the future president put it in his nomination speech, and usher in “a new beginning,” as he announced in Cairo in June 2009.

Obama’s supporters would now have us believe that his swaggering words are as powerful as his soothing ones were supposed to have been. . . .

This is an example of magical thinking that is not wishful. It would indeed be a big tactical mistake for Assad either to attack U.S. forces or again to use chemical weapons while congressional action is pending. But that is because of Obama’s political weakness, not his rhetorical strength. Congressional assent to Obama’s request for military authorization is far from assured; if Assad wants to keep it that way, he will lie low as the debate plays out.

Read the whole thing, including his section on how Obama’s flipflopped. Oh, heck, here’s the best bit:

These past statements indict the president for hypocrisy, but they do not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. In his defense one might claim that his moral sensibility has matured over the past six years. Perhaps, that is, he has grown in office–though he has not grown nearly enough by other measures that one can say he is up to the job.

Unless in the next week or so he discovers a heretofore unrealized capacity to move public opinion on substantive matters of policy, the expedient thing for lawmakers of either party to do will be to vote “no” while smugly minimizing the moral stakes by noting that while Assad is of course “a bad guy,” he poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, the Syrian economy is in shambles, there are lots of other mass-murdering dictators and we can’t bomb ‘em all, and so forth.

Any opportunistic lawmaker who takes that path will be following the example set by the man who is now president of the United States.

Ouch.//

The Prom King President

Announce national emergency, then go golfing!

President Obama and Vice-President Biden held a rare press event Saturday in the Rose Garden to address the escalating tensions with Syria. President Obama said he was convinced Syrian President Bashir Assad had ordered a chemical weapon attack on his citizens and that the US, and the world community, must act in response. 

Obama called on Congress to authorize a military attack against Syria. A new foreign policy crisis now faces the US. After the press event, Obama and Biden went golfing.
I'm not an expert in foreign policy, but I can think of a few things a President ought to do after requesting authority for a military strike on a sovereign nation. There are probably some Congressional leaders who ought to be briefed. There are likely one or two world leaders who would appreciate a chat about the US plans. No doubt generals in the military would have a thought or two about how things should proceed. 

An hour after announcing a potential new military venture in the Middle East, with unknown consequences, "5 Wood or 2 Iron" is the last thing I want on a President's mind.

Wrong Question.

The right question is, why they aren't crashing more?

A new day brings a new poll with bad news for the president. The Wall Street Journal-NBC poll pegs his approval at 45 percent (statistically tied with his low of 44 percent), with 50 percent disapproving of his performance. That puts him where George W. Bush was at this point in his second term. That’s not all. In this poll, for the first time, his disapproval rating in foreign policy matches his approval (46 percent). And voters disapprove of Obamacare by a 13 point margin (47 to 34 percent). It is worth noting that the sample for this poll reflects a 10-point win for Obama in 2012; the actual number was closer to 3 percent.

So Obama is tied with Bush for this point in the second term despite having the largest free public relations campaign - provided by the mainstream media - working for him rather than against him?

That speaks volumes.

The Prom King President

Jennifer Rubin on Obama's leadership style:

Obama is floundering, in part because his leadership was superficial (play to the base, mouth platitudes) and in part because he is a mediocre leader when things are going poorly (i.e. when it matters). Perhaps uninterrupted success in politics after one defeat in a congressional race and the echo chamber of continual applause from the left provided him with a false sense of his ability to persuade and of the world’s willingness to fall in line. In proudly telling voters that the White House counsel tried to “protect” the president from involvement in the IRS scandal, we learned much about a White House turned inward toward self-protection rather than outward to plow new ground.

In any event, when events spin out of control or complex crises hit, Obama tends to complain that decisions are “hard” or situations are “complex.” Presidents adept at leadership and attuned to resolving actual conflict don’t talk that way. If the questions are easy or simple someone else can deal with them. The country deserves better than an AWOL president.

Obama has done nothing about the IRS scandal.


Wasn't it weird that Obama's fierce response to the corruption of the IRS was to ask for the resignation of the "acting commissioner" who had only been in that position since November and had nothing to do with the problems?

Well, here's the answer. 

Steven Miller, the now resigned acting commissioner of the IRS, is telling staff that the abuse scandal is not the reason he’s leaving.

It is with regret that I will be departing from the IRS as my acting assignment ends in early June,’ Miller wrote. “This has been an incredibly difficult time for the IRS given the events of the past few days, and there is a strong and immediate need to restore public trust in the nation’s tax agency.”

Basically, he’s saying that he’s just leaving a couple weeks early, no big deal. Incredible.

The president’s big statement today was a big nothing as far as accountability goes. The only head that has rolled was already scheduled to roll even if the scandal had never come up. It now looks like Obama came out with that statement for two reasons: To look like he was doing something useful, and to bully Republicans not to aggressively pursue the scandal.

Our President thinks we are all idiots.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news.

And, certainly, the fact that our president has been spending like the "Sun King" on his presidential dinners is not something the American people need to be bothered with.

Obama is Evita...

...an untrustworthy, backstabbing Evita.

Thomas Sowell notes that Obama shows up on Letterman rather than meet with Netanyahu after back-stabbing Israel, but no one puts the tough questions to him.

The sad thing is that Evita got away with it because Juan Peron would "disappear" anyone who made an issue of her corruption. The only excuse the Washington press corps has is not being invited to the best parties.

Here is Sowell:

During the same week when the American ambassador to Libya was murdered and his dead body dragged through the streets by celebrating mobs, the president of the United States found time to go on the David Letterman show to demonstrate his sense of humor and how cool he is.

But Barack Obama did not have time to meet with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a nation repeatedly threatened with annihilation by Iranian leaders who are working feverishly toward the creation of nuclear bombs.

This was an extraordinary thing in itself, something that probably no other president of the United States could have gotten away with without raising a firestorm of criticisms and denunciations. But much of the media sees no evil, hears no evil, and speaks no evil when it comes to Barack Obama — especially during an election year.

And:

In March, Foreign Policy magazine reported that “several high-level sources” in the Obama administration had revealed Israel’s secret relationship with Azerbaijan, where Israeli planes could refuel on the way to or from an air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The administration feared “the risks of an Israeli strike on Iran,” according to these “high-level sources.” Apparently the risks of an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel are not so much feared.

This leak was one of the historic and unconscionable betrayals of an ally whose very existence is threatened. But the media still saw no evil, heard no evil, and spoke no evil.

The only question now is whether the American voters will wake up before it is too late — not just for Israel, but for America.

Is it the pitter-patter of a preference cascade?

The insiders at the Washington Post discovery that America's Greatest Communicator Ever is lousy at press conferences:

If you are president of the United States and you don’t have anything to say, don’t have a press conference to say it. If you’re the president of the United States and by Thursday it’s widely believed you’ve had one of the worst weeks of your presidency, take Friday off, and specifically avoid having a press conference.

Anytime you are president and you’re speaking in public at an ill-timed press conference after a bad week, try to have something to say, and do a good job in saying it. I watched the whole thing, but it’s not easy to think of one useful thing that he had to say. And what he said, he said very poorly. Was it just me, or did the president seem a little dazed and confused? He should have had a cup of coffee before the press conference.

And one more thing that’s a pet peeve. The president says “uhhh” too much. When I was a cable television news extra during the ‘90s and early 2000s, you learn early to purge your presentation of “uhhh.” Saying “uhhh” suggests uncertainty and is distracting. (And in my case, when it was accompanied by a Southern accent, it was even worse.) I don’t know what the president had in mind, but his own meandering, stuttering performance could not have done him any good with any audience. What was he, uhhh, thinking?

Perhaps the president and others are huddled in an after-action review meeting in the Oval Office right now. It appears no one at The White House wants to give the president bad news or an honest critique of his performance. Somebody should print this post and slide it under the Oval Office door immediately.

First, there's a reason that Obama has given fewer press conferences than past presidents, i.e,, Obama didn't give a press conference between 2009 and 2012. Why would we think he has any particular facility with that form of communication?

Second, telempropter dependence.

Hey, that emperor is naked.

Romney 2012: it’s about eating dogs!

Patterico says:

P.S. Treacher says on Twitter:

This election isn’t about Obama eating dogs. The sooner we stop talking about Obama eating dogs, which is something that he did, the better.

I disagree. This election is about eating dogs. This election is most assuredly not about electing a President who won’t put us in the hole for $5 trillion in four years, or putting someone in the Oval Office who will preserve our tenuous hold on an occasional Supreme Court majority.

It is about eating dogs. And where dogs ride on family vacations. And I will not tolerate any distractions from those all-important themes.

I plan to illustrate this point often, by concluding a post by noting whether the subject of the post has eaten dogs. I don’t want to have to explain the importance of this every time, which is why I will explain it here, once, and simply link it in the future.

Romney 2012: it’s about eating dogs!

The point about dragging the Left through the glass when we can is that maybe it will teach the Left to stop playing the game of distraction and derision, which it has been permitted to play with impunity. As The Virginian notes, times, they may be a-changing:

We may be seeing the end of an era dominated by ability of Leftist comedians like Jon Stewart, Bill Maher or the cast of SNL to create a false image of a political figure. Perhaps the trashing of Sarah Palin was the high point of their power, just as Watergate was for the MSM.

Ridicule is the most potent political weapon. Obama is rapidly looking less and less like a President and more and more like an inept pol who’s also something of a doofus. Romney looks like a President, he acts and talks like a President; Obama was always surrounded by a rock star aura. But a rock star is not blamed for high unemployment or soaring gas prices. Obama will always have his groupies, but his hold on the Oval Office is slipping away.

Obama has been a doofus during his entire tenure as president. He's been pure comedy gold for any writer of a television sit-com. Remember when he told the world that Part of My Job Is to Scout Out Where I May Want to Bring Michelle Back Later for Vacation’ or when he he insulted the Irish Prime Minister by suggesting that Irishmen were drunks or when he insulted the French president by calling him ugly or when he said that a fallen soldier was alive or when he accidentlly signalled to the band to play God save the Queen and then began his toast to the Queen (which was the same 2011 trip that he signed a guest book indicating that he thought he was signing it in "2008" or when he turned over a press conference to Bill Clinton or when he took lavish vacations during a recession that caused European - but not American - media to say "WTF?" or his bowing to anything that claimed "royal" descent, or giving the British Prime Minister a gift box of 25 "classic movies" on DVD or the time when he won the Noble Peace Prize for doing nothing?

Or this great moment in presidential history, when our President struck an Alfred E. Neuman pose:

Good times, good times.

The Teleprompter President.

Interesting Side by Side Comparison of Obama using identical phrases, and identical thoughtful pauses and intonation, in speeches a year apart.



The Anchoress observes, "He’s just reading. It’s just words. He’s not feeling any of it."

President Compassion-Dude fails to call people.

First it's the elderly couple driven out of their home by Obamap-supporter Spike Lee:

And I want to know what Obama thinks about this. Fox News:

SANFORD, Fla – An elderly Florida couple have been forced to move into a hotel after their home address was wrongly tweeted as belonging to the man who shot teen Trayvon Martin.

The tweets were traced back to a man in California and the address was also reportedly retweeted by director Spike Lee to his almost 250,000 followers.

The couple, aged 70 and 72, have been harassed with hate mail, been hassled by media and had scared neighbors questioning them since the tweet, their son Chip Humble told the Orlando Sentinel.

Fearful for their safety, and hoping to escape the spotlight, the couple have temporarily moved to a hotel.

Somebody please try to justify this. Seriously. Tell me why this is okay. Tell me why this doesn’t matter. Tell me how this helps. Tell me how anyone involved in this fiasco expects us to just forget what they’ve said and done.

And once you hand out compassionate phone calls everyone wants one:

Parents of murdered British students criticise Barack Obama

Two close friends of the dead men who had attended the eight day trial in Sarasota, Florida. had also delivered highly emotional impact statements to the court prior to the sentencing.

Paul Davies and Joe Hallett spoke of the "living hell" they and others who knew the men had suffered since the murders.

During the eight day trial they had been shown graphic crime scene and autopsy photos shown in court.

Later speaking after Tyson was jailed Davies and Hallett lashed out at Mr Obama saying the deaths of their friends was "not worthy of ten minutes of his time."

Davies said:"We would like to publicly express our dissatisfaction at the lack of any public or private message of support or condolence from any American governing body or indeed, President Obama himself.

"Mr Kouzaris has written to President Obama on three separate occasions and is yet to even receive the courtesy of a reply.

"It would perhaps appear that Mr Obama sees no political value in facilitating such a request or that the lives of two British tourists are not worthy of ten minutes of his time."

The rebuke follows Mr Obama's personal intervention into the shooting in Florida of a young black teenager by a white-Hispanic neighbourhood watch captain.

The death of 17 year old Trayvon Martin has sparked nationwide protests with his supporters claiming he was victim of a racist attack.

Mr Obama entered the controversy last week by saying if he had a son he would have looked like Martin.

Obama's very bad week.

Even Peggy Noonan is losing her love for the Prom King President:

The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You're kidding me. That's not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it's not even constitutional!" Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church's religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.

What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was, including for those in the church who'd been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.

Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for "space" and said he will have "more flexibility" in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league, so faux-sophisticated. When he knew he'd been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.

And:

Maybe a stinging decision is coming, maybe not, but in a purely political sense this is how it looks: We were in crisis in 2009—we still are—and instead of doing something strong and pertinent about our economic woes, the president wasted history's time. He wasted time that was precious—the debt clock is still ticking!—by following an imaginary bunny that disappeared down a rabbit hole.

The high court's hearings gave off an overall air not of political misfeasance but malfeasance.

All these things have hardened lines of opposition, and left opponents with an aversion that will not go away.

I am not saying that the president has a terrible relationship with the American people. I'm only saying he's made his relationship with those who oppose him worse.

In terms of the broad electorate, I'm not sure he really has a relationship. A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.

That's the thing. We were in a crisis in 2008, and Obama has frittered away th elast three years, if in fact, he hasn't made things worse.

And:

The president had his mind on health care. And, to be fair-minded, health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening, distressing, immediate part. Not the 'Is America over?' part.

And so the relationship the president wanted never really knitted together. Health care was like the birth-control mandate: It came from his hermetically sealed inner circle, which operates with what seems an almost entirely abstract sense of America. They know Chicago, the machine, the ethnic realities. They know Democratic Party politics. They know the books they've read, largely written by people like them—bright, credentialed, intellectually cloistered. But there always seems a lack of lived experience among them, which is why they were so surprised by the town hall uprisings of August 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections.

That's a theme that has been running through a lot of Obama stories over the last three and a half years.

The Week that Was.

Obama's work week, so far:

So, in one week, Mr. Obama got caught whispering promises to our enemy, incited a race war, raised serious questions about his understanding of the Constitution, and then got smacked down over his proposed budget that was so wildly reckless that even Democrats in Congress could not support it.

It was as if you lumped Hurricane Katrina and the Abu Ghraib abuses into one week for George W. Bush. And added on top of that the time he oddly groped German Chancellor Angela Merkel and got caught cursing on a hot mic.

Even then, it wouldn’t be as bad as Mr. Obama’s week. You would probably also have to toss in the time Mr. Bush’s father threw up into the lap of Japan’s prime minister. Only then might we be approaching how bad a week it was for Mr. Obama.

The great thing about having a Democrat in the White House...

...is that there is never any bad news.

So, you can understand why Democrats are shocked - shocked! - when Obama's poll numbers fall despite all the great news.

Michael Barone writes:

You can almost hear the note of surprise in their voices when you read the Washington Post and New York Times reporters' stories on their papers' latest political polls.

Surprise! Just when they thought that Barack Obama was pulling ahead, with positive job ratings, and just after the mainstream media have been savaging Republicans for two words Rush Limbaugh uttered on his radio program, Obama's numbers seem to be tanking.

Actually, the numbers are not so striking or so surprising. The media narrative for the last four weeks has been that the president's job approval has been rising in response to good economic news.

But the economic news has not been all that striking. We had a quarter in which economic growth reached 2.8 percent. We've had two months with job growth of better than 200,000.

Peachy. But in 1983, the year before Ronald Reagan's re-election, the gross domestic product rose 8.9 percent not just for one quarter but over the whole year. There were two months when job growth was 729,000 and 660,000.

That's the kind of economic recovery that enables an incumbent president's campaign to run a credible "Morning in America" ad. If the Obama campaign ran one now, it would be fodder for "Saturday Night Live" and Jon Stewart.

Nor was the supposed spike in Obama's job rating so high. In the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls, it never got better than 49 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove.

Now the ABC/WaPo poll has it at 46-50 and the CBS/NYT poll at 41-47. Rasmussen Reports tracking has it at 47-52.

That downtick is not huge, though it seems to be offsetting the February uptick. Some basic factors are still working for Obama. Americans want to think well of their presidents; this helped Bill Clinton in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2004. Many voters do not want to be seen as rejecting the first black president.

On the other hand, Obama's major policies are unpopular. You can gauge that by the number of words devoted to the stimulus package in his last State of the Union: zero.

Or by the persistent unpopularity of Obamacare. Or by the fact that 50 percent in the ABC/WaPo poll strongly disapproved of his handling of the economy.

Or by the response to Democrats' claims that Republicans were waging a "war on women" by opposing the administration's mandate that religious affiliated organizations' insurance policies cover birth control.

The New York Times in its print article buried its own results, as blogger Mickey Kaus noted. Its poll showed women favored allowing religious organizations to opt out of such coverage by a 53 to 38 percent margin. The margin among men and women together was 57 to 36 percent.

Four-dollar gas prices surely took a toll on the president's numbers as well, despite his repeated boasts that domestic oil production is up.

Americans know the president cannot set the price at the pump. But they are also apparently aware that his administration shut down oil production in the Gulf of Mexico and has been slow-walking drilling permits, that it banned offshore drilling over other coasts, and that it denied a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Keystone denial remains astonishing for reasons that, I suspect, any Democratic pollster would tell you if you could promise absolute confidentiality.

A February Pew poll showed a 42 to 15 percent margin for building the pipeline. The fact that Obama was lobbying Senate Democrats last week to block the pipeline and that all but three voted to do so won't help the president or his party.

Last year I described the Keystone decision as a "no-brainer." It never occurred to me that Obama would decide to favor the rich environmentalists he encounters at fundraisers over the mass of the American people who want the Canadian oil and the construction jobs the pipeline would supply.

As someone once said, "never buy your own B.S."

The great thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that...

...there never is any bad news.

Obama's Strongly Disapprove Quotient is 44%.

That's "strongly disapproves." The "total disapproval" rate is 54% and has been over 50% during the entire time that Obama has been supposedly "winning" on the anti-Catholic/Fluke affair. In addition, it appears that the trend has been to move people from the simply disapprove to the "strongly disapprove" camp.

I just have to think that (a) that's awful, (b) I haven't heard it, and (c) if it pertained to a Republican president it would be a feature of non-stop news.

This blog provides some historical comparisons.