I Think If You Apologized for FDR

And said some nice things about Hoover, I could manage to shave a few more points off your rating.

From USN&WR:

Obama’s Approval Rating Could Spell Disaster in 2010 Elections

By Peter Roff

Posted: August 17, 2010

The White House had hoped that the summer of 2010 would be “recovery summer,” a time when the jobs numbers would rebound and the U.S. economy would again begin to grow.

They must be disappointed. The economy, as it has been for most of the time Barack Obama has been president, remains flat on its back--with many analysts predicting that more bad news is on the horizon. The stimulus, which remains the cornerstone of Obama’s legislative achievements, continues to perform at a level something less than advertised, with its supporters continuing to cling to the nebulous concept of “jobs saved” as a way to defend it.

Also failing to mount a recovery during July and August have been Obama’s presidential approval ratings.

The latest Gallup survey, a random sample of 3,672 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, selected using random-digit-dial sampling, shows Obama at the lowest point yet in his presidency. Now at just 44 percent, he has seen support for his agenda collapse since the beginning of the year--when nearly three-quarters of the nation gave him favorable marks.

“The drop in Obama's weekly average was driven by particularly low ratings near the end of the week, with record-low three-day rolling averages of 42 percent for August 12-14 and August 13-15 polling,” Gallup said. “Prior to this weekend, Obama's three-day low had been 44 percent. Additionally, Obama's disapproval rating reached 50 percent for the first time in the August 13-15 average.”
...

Dear Mr. President,

As you might remember, before she was forced to bow out due to some fairly minor tax problems, your Administration was trying to install Nancy Killefer as your Chief Performance Officer. It was all to be a part of your pragmatic, data-and-results-driven management style that was going to take much of the subjectivity, opacity and rancor out of the way the Executive branch -- and Washington generally -- did business.

For the record, genuine results- and accountability-based management is an idea that I wholeheartedly support.

It is now 18 months later, and you have spent much of that time taking your fiscal counsel from skeevy Goldman Sachs alums, and heeding the political-triangulation advice of people who seem to think Liberals should be ashamed to believe what we believe, but who have never met a wingnut they would not take out on a second, third, fourth or fifth date on the hint of a suggestion of a possibility that maybe, someday, they could hump their electoral leg for a minute or two.

During that time, your approval ratings -- and those of the Party which you lead -- have also dropped steadily. Or, as your Chief Performance Officer would have phrased it, some of your key curves are bending in radically wrong directions.

Those are the results.

Where is the accountability?