In today's Rasmussen presidential poll, only 26 percent of the nation's voters strongly approve of Barack Obama's performance as president, while 43 percent strongly disapprove -- giving him a Presidential Approval Index rating, a sum calculated by subtracting the number of strong disapprovals from the number of strong approvals, of negative 17. His overall disapproval rating is 53 percent (it has been 50 percent or more for over a month). But it is the extraordinarily high proportion of those who strongly disapprove that bears noting.I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert.
In January, George W. Bush left office with a "Strongly Disapprove" rating of ... 43 percent. It took Bush eight years to achieve that level of strong disapproval, despite how the mainstream media pummeled him for years. Obama has reached that level in 11 months, despite a media that for months could not use his name in a sentence without also adding "Lincoln" and "FDR."
Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
To appreciate the magnitude of Obama's ratings fall, consider that after his first full day in office, his presidential index was positive 30. Today's index of negative 17 reflects a swing of 47 points in less than a year.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
A commenter at the Huffington Post today observes that Obama has "accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center." The president has also unified the Republican party and created a tea-party movement that in some polls is more popular than both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
At this stage of the Clinton administration, voters were upset about a health-care reform being planned in secret by the president's wife; today they appear even more upset by an administration pushing through an ultra-partisan restructuring of the economy in the dead of night. If this keeps up, there is going to be an electoral earthquake less than 11 months from now.