Entries for March 2009

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

President Obama got more good news in various polls today, with some troubling signs sprinkled in.

The president remains strong in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, with 66 percent approving of his job performance (down marginally from 68 percent in February); 60 percent approve of his handling of the economy, which is the same as last month.

Rasmussen's daily tracking "Approval Index" (the number of people who strongly approve less the number of people who strongly disapprove) has Obama at +11, the highest it has been since the first week of March.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Have you seen The Fox Nation, Fox News Channel's new opinion site, yet? Intrigued by this Hot Air post, I wandered over and checked it out. I wonder if it isn't a giant put-on by The Onion—Fox has officially entered the realm of self-parody.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

A number of bloggers have suggested that now Obama "owns" the auto industry—if it fails, blame will now accrue to him. This is neither necessarily true nor necessarily a bad thing.

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Reading through some of the conservative blog-reactions to the announcement that the administration has decapitated General Motors while giving both GM and Chrysler a firm deadline, it strikes me that they are still stuck on the last auto debate—whether to bail out the automakers at all.

Once we cleared that hurdle, the administration's actions are broadly sensible (though it's still not clear whether that's true in the particulars).

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

President Obama announced his new Afghan strategy today, with significantly higher funding and more troops to the region.

As my colleague Anna Mulrine has reported, one of the biggest hurdles facing Obama's plans is the endemic corruption in the Afghan government:

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Broadcast nutter Glenn Beck is the latest right-winger to pick up the Obama/Teleprompter meme. He does so with typical, ahem, gusto, calling the president a "Manchurian candidate."

Give Beck credit for this: At least he has distilled this charge to its inane core.

Let's be clear, again (and again): A teleprompter is a tool without any magical properties. The main difference between using a teleprompter and having a speech typed on paper in front of you is that teleprompters are reportedly harder to use.

A president (or any politician, or for that matter, television commentator) using a teleprompter signifies ... that his remarks have been prepared ahead of time.

So where exactly is the problem?

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

In case you're looking for another sign that the strain of fixing the economy is taking its toll on the Democrats, I give you Laura Tyson, an economic adviser to Barack Obama during the campaign and now a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

"The Democratic coalition is badly broken already," she said. "We have Sen. [Kent] Conrad already eviscerating the budget of the president."