Obama rolls up his sleeves

It seems Barack Obama has become the Rodney Dangerfield of Presidents as respondents to a Quinnipiac poll rated him the worst president since WWII. Not that many of those surveyed could even name the presidents since WWII, but the media has run with the story, and Romney was spotted in New Hampshire campaigning for the intrepid Scott Brown after many in the same survey felt the country would be better off with him as president.

Yep, that is the fickle nature of Americans, never satisfied with who they have in office. But, once out of office you can be rehabilitated pretty quickly. Bill Clinton is at an all time high in popularity and even George Bush has enjoyed a big uptick in popularity since leaving the White House, even though most of the woes that continue to dog us can be traced back to his administration. As Harry Truman famously said, "the buck stops here," meaning the Oval Office.

Emotions seem to trump reason All this bad press Obama has been getting has given his approval rating a big hit, slumping to 40 per cent while his disapproval rating has climbed to 54 per cent, according to Gallup Daily. Events appear to have conspired against him with the bad news coming out of Iraq, the various House "investigations" and the lawsuit the House has threatened to file against him for not carrying out the laws they see fit.

A lot of this angst seems to come from Obama exercising more executive privilege than many think he should. He has been dubbed the "imperial president" by the outgoing House Majority Leader. Lame duck Eric Cantor feels the President has issued way too many executive orders, including a raise in the minimum wage for federal employees and most recently calling for stricter enforcement of carbon emission laws, while ignoring the prerogatives of the House. As a result, the House is seeking ways to defund his efforts.

What's a president to do? Obama seems determined to make this a year of action despite the reaction he has been getting in the press. He has taken to the stump to promote his initiatives, even when they come in sharp contrast to other Democrats' electoral ambitions. With two years left in his tenure, the President wants to leave a positive legacy after a highly fractious four years with a belligerent Congress. Unfortunately, this doesn't necessarily translate very well in the polls. I guess he can take up painting when he leaves the White House.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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