Barrel Strength

Below are the Gallup poll results for percentage of the public, that believes that a president is doing a “excellent/good job”, after the first 100-days in office.

Obama 2009 56%
Bush 2001 62%
Clinton, 1993 55%
Bush, 1989 58%
Reagan, 1981 67%
Carter, 1977 63%
Nixon, 1969 61%
Sampling error: +/-3% pts

This places Obama’s rating as second-worst when compared to the sample of last seven presidents.  Obama squeaked by America’s first-black-president by one single percentage point.

One of the knocks against Obama has been that he is excessively deferential as shown by the fact that he bowed to the Saudi king.  In addition to that solitary event, he also obsequiously follows TOTUS on a regular basis.  It seems that he has finally found his spine.

Politico reports today that POTUS had the audacity to talk back to TOTUS!

“In addition to John – sorry, the – I just noticed I jumped the gun here,” Obama said, pausing for several seconds as he looked at the prompter. “Go ahead. Move it up. I had already introduced all you guys.”

There were those who said that the elevation of Borat Barack Obama would restore the importance of government appointments, which was exemplified in the Bush administration by attempts to appoint Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.  How has that promise worked out?  Your correspondent noted the following in a post in February of this year:

Meanwhile, the sources said, Obama’s senior economic advisers were hobbled in crafting the plan by a shortage of personnel. To date, the president has not nominated any assistant secretaries or undersecretaries at the Treasury, and the handful of mid-level staffers who have started work were still finding their offices and getting their building passes and BlackBerrys.

This was followed by a post in March of this year, which noted the following regarding the upcoming G20 meeting:

In an extraordinary blunder, the usually-guarded Sir Gus said no-one in the U.S. Treasury department was answering telephone calls.

He said it meant the Government was finding it ‘unbelievably difficult’ to hold discussions ahead of the meeting of world leaders in London.

It seems the appointment problems are not limited to the Treasury Dept.  Today we learn this.

The Obama administration declared a “public health emergency” Sunday to confront the swine flu — but is heading into its first medical outbreak without a secretary of Health and Human Services or appointees in any of the department’s 19 key posts.

President Barack Obama has not yet chosen a surgeon general or the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His choice to run the Food and Drug Administration awaits confirmation.

Is it any wonder that we read reports like this?

U.S. public health officials did not know about a growing outbreak of swine flu in Mexico until nearly a week after that country started invoking protective measures, and didn’t learn that the deaths were caused by a rare strain of the influenza until after Canadian officials did.

It is indeed fortunate that US is being led by the “intensely intelligent” and the “intellectually curious“.