I have no loyalty to Commentary and can gladly get behind Charles Franklin’s argument instead of theirs, since his graph shows the Gallup poll results more clearly. (Sorry about the crappy link.)

I can also go along with the idea that the economy is the driving force behind the presidential polls. It’s sad that the American people still haven’t realized how little power the president really has over the economy either way.

But even if Obama’s numbers are low because of the economy, Obama promised in _The Audacity of Hope_ and throughout his campaign to do away with “politics as usual.” He hasn’t met that promise yet. I realize that it’s a big task, but that’s partly my point: he spoke bigger than he could be, and people resent that.

It’s not that bipartisanship would bring up the poll numbers for any president, or even that bipartisanship is a panacea, but when “unity” is a central campaign promise and that promise isn’t met for whatever reason, people (read: independents) get miffed.

I’m not saying that it’s all Obama’s fault, either. The Republicans have had more than their share of heel-digging, especially their vitriolic pundits. But if Obama wants to meet his promise that he’s rising above “politics as usual,” he should focus on breaking stridently and radically from the permanent campaign mindset Bush had. He should be taking wild risks with Fox News, even confronting them directly, repeatedly about their bogus claims, rather than blackballing them the way they blackball him. He should also be taking even wilder risks with Congress, aiming to break up the heavy Republican and Democrat split on the major issues.

He’s done an exceptional job breaking party line expectations with Afghanistan. I hope he continues to surprise.

The point is that presidents who are faced with a bad economy in the post-war era ALWAYS, regardless of their other actions, decline in approval until the economy turns around. Obama could be Jesus himself and his numbers would still be in the toilet if the economy was bad. This is what happens. It doesn’t matter what Commentary says or if he’s the lowest or second-lowest. All he has to do is turn the economy around in the next 2.5 years (which, considering economic cycles, shouldn’t be considered unlikely) and history shows his numbers will rebound as well.

That was my whole point. It’s not about transparency or bipartisanship or even health care (as that won’t be a salient political issue in six months anyway and will likely be very popular once it goes into effect). It’s not about any of those things. In the words of James Carville: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

First of all, I wouldn’t believe Commentary any further than I could throw them. If you’re going to get all lofty in talks of “bipartisanship,” a hard-right, neoconservative magazine like Commentary shouldn’t be your primary source of reason.

Secondly, you’ve committed a fallacy in suggesting that Obama’s disapproval stems from a lack of bipartisanship and transparency without citing credible evidence to prove that notion.

And third, there’s a much more readily acceptable reason for his polling decline: a bad economy. Obama actually only has the second-worst post-WWII presidential approval rating at the end of his first term. The worst? The Sainted Ronald Reagan, who I think we can all agree, regardless of partisanship, really bounced back polling-wise once the bad economy of the early 1980s turned around. In fact, it’s interest to note that, as Charles Franklin points out here, Obama and Reagan’s first year approval rating declines are nearly identical. Also similar? William Jefferson Clinton, who also entered office with an awful economy, but subsequently found a way to turn that into a second term, a thriving economy, a huge budgetary surplus and the highest exit approval rating in the post-war period. (It’s also worth noting that the Clinton administration, despite being forced to deal with a GOP-dominated House from 1994-2000, didn’t exactly play bipartisan nice-nice themselves. House Speaker Newt Gingrich effectively shut down Congress at one point because of disagreements with the White House — and Clinton came out of it A-OK. He actually makes Obama look like a bipartisanship-loving peach in comparison.)

So really, your claim that more bipartisanship and transparency will salvage Obama’s approval ratings isn’t really historically defensible. (You could potentially argue that bipartisanship and transparency could somehow make it easier for him to turn the economy around, but those are ultimately means, not ends. The American people don’t generally care so much for process as they do for results.) It seems much more important for him, in the short-term, to figure out how to turn the economy around, regardless of whether or not the Republicans are on board.

This is why, according to Commentary Magazine “Mr. Obama now has the highest disapproval rating in Gallup’s history for a president entering his second year in office.” Until he pushes for large-scale bipartisan change he’ll continue to find disapproval.