When swimming pools opened around Memorial Day, according to the Gallup daily track, President Obama's approval rating stood at 64 percent. Now, as we approach Labor Day and the lifeguards get ready to go off to college, Obama's approval in the Gallup track is 52 percent. Meanwhile, while Congress in the abstract is never too popular, the Pew poll has congressional favorability at a 24-year-low. Why the drop-off in support? Sure, Obama's numbers were bound to return to earth at some point; we live in an evenly divided country. Yes, the unemployment rate and the price of gasoline have both risen since Obama took office. And approval ratings are inversely correlated with these numbers. But the truth is that the president and Congress have spent the entire summer trying to convince the country that (a) a major overhaul of the country's health care system is necessary, and (b) the way to achieve such an overhaul is to increase federal mandates, regulations, and fees while buttressing the insurance-dominated system we have today. Other approaches to the issue have been ignored, and grass-roots opposition to the Democrats' plans has been demonized. Here's how Fouad Ajami put it last week:
... [T]here is joylessness in Mr. Obama. He is a scold, the "Yes we can!" mantra is shallow, and at any rate, it is about the coming to power of a man, and a political class, invested in its own sense of smarts and wisdom, and its right to alter the social contract of the land. In this view, the country had lost its way and the new leader and the political class arrayed around him will bring it back to the right path. Thus the moment of crisis would become an opportunity to push through a political economy of redistribution and a foreign policy of American penance. The independent voters were the first to break ranks. They hadn't underwritten this fundamental change in the American polity when they cast their votes for Mr. Obama.
Word comes today that Obama may try to hit the reset button. Rather than shift course, however, and focus on jobs and the deficit, it looks like Obama is going to double-down, put forward a health-care plan of his own (one that lacks, according to Mike Allen, a public option), and attempt to strong-arm it through Congress. "I'd be lying to you if I told you I don't look at polls," White House adviser David Axelrod tells Politico. He may not want to look at the polls at all if Obama continues down this treacherous course.