The trend line suggests it will go even lower, possibly as soon as today, since the 38 percent represents a rolling three-day average. But it seems a good a point as any at which to stop and stare at the wreck.
Gallup illustrates the change in Obama's approval since the day he took office, and while it didn't take look for him to sink from the mid-60s height of the early days, he's entering somewhat new territory in the 30s:
Obama got re-elected with just about 52 percent of the vote, which means you've now got 14 percent who, to one degree or another, regret re-electing him. To think that through a little, conventional wisdom says that each election starts with 40 percent who will vote Democrat no matter what, and 40 percent who will vote Republican no matter what. The contest is to win the other 20.
That being the case, even some of the die-hards are now giving up on Obama, although in fairness there are surely some liberals who are upset because (they think) he's not liberal enough. Yeah, I know, but have you met some of these people?
What's driving it? My sense is that it's not just one thing, although weakness and indecisiveness in the midst of an international crisis is always an approval-rating killer. Even more so, though, I think people are just getting the sense that there's really no substantive core to Obama. His presidency is about achieving political goals, not governing goals, and in an even broader sense, you might say people are figuring out that his presidency is about him and not about them.
If you liberals want to comfort yourselves by pointing to the even-lower approval rating of Congress, go ahead. I would be one of the disapprovers, as would many conservatives who don't think Boehner or McConnell (the latter having much less leverage) has used the opportunities the voters afforded them very effectively at all. The problem is not that they're right-wing crazies. It's that their ineffectual.
I'm sure plenty of liberals who now disapprove of Obama think the same thing, although to be sure there are probably a lot more who disapprove because he is so willing to abuse his executive position to get things he wants as an alternative to working with Congress.
Any way you look at it, though, Obama has fallen strikingly far from the mountain on which so many people placed him when he was first elected. It was always unrealistic to expect him to be some sort of demigod who would heal the nation just by the power of his presence, and if you're disappointed that he didn't turn out to be that, it's your own fault. But still, he did encourage that expectation every step of the way, only to reveal himself subsequently as an empty suit who has no leadership capacity, no executive skills and no vision beyond a warmed-over socialism that can only be pursued by forcing it down the throats of a nation that's getting pretty tired of that sort of thing right about now.
Sigh. Two more years of this crap.
