by Donald Finley

Created on: August 21, 2009   Last Updated: August 22, 2009

Immediately after his inauguration, President Obama's approval rating according to Gallup was 68%. His disapproval percentage was 12%. Now, those numbers are 51% and 41% respectively. That's a 17% approval rating decline. Approval ratings get good press coverage, even when in decline, but the 29% increase in disapproval represents nearly 100 million Americans who have changed their minds in just six months. The spread in the general election between McCain and Obama was less than 8%. The results would likely be different today.

Obama campaigned as a moderate with broad promises and polished rhetoric about hope and change. He relied upon a teleprompter to ensure his rhetoric was delivered with precision. Since his inauguration, he has governed from the extreme left while attempting to remake America's landscape. As he has fought gaffe after gaffe without his teleprompter, some of the details of his promises and intentions have come to light. When put into context, American's are frightened.

The context has been written by the government's takeover of the automobile industry and the mortgage banking industry, as well as the massive spending of the stimulus package, which has resulted in - well, the only certainty is a much greater deficit. Now that some of the specifics of the government's planned takeover of the health care industry are leaking out, some conflicting certainties are the only logical conclusions. Either he must increase taxes to pay for health care, or he must ration care. He says he will do neither. He's hard to take seriously anymore.

Obama said he would eliminate earmarks, but the stimulus bill had thousands of them, and as they were revealed, many were not only wasteful and irresponsible, but comical. He repeatedly blamed the Bush administration for the circumstances he inherited, then authorized spending more money than every other president in our history combined, then again blamed Bush for the deficit. He spent nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus money and put an additional $3 billion into "cash for clunkers" to boost the automobile industry the government had just purchased, then lambasted the defense budget as irresponsible. Aren't we still fighting two wars?

Obama campaigned on an anti-war platform, bringing troops home and closing Guantanamo Bay. He has since reaffirmed every warfighting policy Bush implemented, except what to call the Global War on Terror. Now, it's an "Overseas Contingency Operation". He

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