Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Today marks the first time his overall approval rating has ever fallen below 50% among Likely Voters nationwide. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove.
At this point in his Presidency, Jimmy Carter was holding at 65% in spite of the Bert Lance affair. Richard Nixon was at 62%. In fact, only Bill Clinton was in worse shape, at a mere 43%.
Other polls have Obama higher, but they are skewed (deliberately?) by a curious methodology of polling the general U.S. adult population rather than likely voters.
There really is no precedent for such low poll numbers. Its worth remembering that Clinton became President with 43% of the popular vote, so his July numbers were really a case of "holding steady".
The Obama campaigns strategy of representing their candidate as all things to all people has bit them in the hindquarters. A vessel for "hope and change" is inevitably going to disappoint. So many mutually contradictory expectations have been imposed on Mr. Obama that 50% is probably a normal state of affairs. His inexplicable comments on a local police matter have served to erode even his most basic political asset--the view of President as a "post-racial" candidate. Even a modestly intelligent person should have had the sense to, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, "plough around" this particular stump.
I keep hearing what a political genius Obama is, but I'm just not seeing it.
