Even from across the Atlantic, the Telegraph has not failed to notice the terrible things happening to Barack Obama’s approval rating in the polls.

The decline in Barack Obama’s popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.

Gallup recorded an average daily approval rating of 53 per cent for Mr Obama for the third quarter of the year, a sharp drop from the 62 per cent he recorded from April.

His current approval rating – hovering just above the level that would make re-election an uphill struggle – is close to the bottom for newly-elected president. Mr Obama entered the White House with a soaring 78 per cent approval rating. …

Jeffrey Jones of Gallup explained: “The dominant political focus for Obama in the third quarter was the push for health care reform, including his nationally televised address to Congress in early September.

“Obama hoped that Congress would vote on health care legislation before its August recess, but that goal was missed, and some members of Congress faced angry constituents at town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to climb near 10 per cent.” …

Mr Obama is also facing widespread criticism for his drawn-out decision-making process over what to do next in Afghanistan.

Trying to nationalize health care during Clinton’s first term cost the democrat party a 40 year old Congressional majority in both houses. At times like these, one is obliged to quote Santayana, who observed that those who cannot learn from history are inevitably obliged to repeat it.

Vladimir Putin has described the demise of the Soviet Empire as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.

Putin is not alone in declining to celebrate the defeat of Communism. Spiegel reports that Barack Obama is opting out of going to Berlin to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down.

The unhappy task of keeping a stiff upper lip while pretending to celebrate the victory of a Republican conservative and a Polish pope over socialism will devolve upon the unfortunate Hillary Clinton.

US President Barack Obama has shelved his plans to attend festivities marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will reportedly take his place at the Nov. 9 celebrations.

Germany is going to have to wait longer than expected for US President Barack Obama’s first official visit. Citing government sources in Berlin, Reuters reported on Friday that Obama will not attend the anniversary festivities marking two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event will take place on Nov. 9 — just two days before Obama embarks on a long-planned trip to Asia on Nov. 11.

My liberal friends would scoff at the idea of there being any similarity at all, but their ideological affinity is recognized even in China, and a souvenir vendor in the Communist capital is exploiting the obvious resemblance quite profitably.

CRI:

A souvenir shop in the popular Houhai tourist area of Beijing has recently become quite famous because it is selling products with the image of U.S. President Barack Obama’s face imprinted over that of China’s late leader Mao Zedong, CCTV.com reports.

T-shirts and pouches with the “Oba Mao” design, a creative idea by shop owner Liu Mingjie, have attracted the attention of many foreign tourists.

“We usually sell souvenirs printed with historical figures,” Liu said. “Oba Mao is my new creation. The souvenirs with this logo are quite popular among visitors, foreign tourists in particular.”

Peggy Noonan contends that the Progressive Frontier of government expansion closed some time ago. Americans already have all the government, all the services, taxes, and regulations they can stand. Barack Obama and the democrats in Congress are yearning to go back to a Depression era past in which paternalistic leaders in Washington taxed and spent, and delivered de haute en bas charitable goodies to grateful voters. Americans today know that they will have to pay for any gifts sent to them from Washington themselves.

I’m not sure the White House can tell the difference between campaign mode and governing mode, but it is the difference between “us versus them” and “us.” People sense the president does too much of the former, and this is reflected not only in words but decisions, such as the pursuit of a health-care agenda that was inevitably divisive. It has lost the public’s enthusiastic backing, if it ever had it, but is gaining on Capitol Hill. People don’t want whatever it is they’re about to get, and they’re about to get it. In that atmosphere everything grates, but most especially us-versus-them-ism.

The biggest thing supporters of a health care overhaul do not understand about those who oppose their efforts, and who oppose the Baucus bill, which has triumphantly passed the Senate Finance Committee even though no one knows exactly what is or will end up in it, is the issue of context.

The Democratic Party and the White House repeatedly suggest that if you are not for the bill or an overhaul, you don’t care about your fellow human beings and you love and support the insurance companies. Actually, no one loves the insurance companies, including the insurance companies. … But the Obama administration’s strategy of making (the insurance industry) “the villain” in “the narrative” will probably not have that much punch because . . . well, again, who likes the insurance companies? Who ever did?

People who oppose a health-care overhaul are not in love with insurance companies. They’re not even in love with the status quo. Everyone knows the jerry-built system of the past half-century has weak points. They just don’t think the current plan will shore them up. They think the plan would create new weak points and widen old ones. They think this because they have brains.

But even that doesn’t get to the real subtext of the opposition. Yes, the timing is wrong—we have other, more urgent crises to face, and an exploding deficit. And yes, a big change in a huge economic sector during economic crisis is looking for trouble.

But a big part of opposition to the health-care plan is a sense of historical context. People actually have a sense of the history they’re living in and the history their country has recently lived through. They understand the moment we’re in.

In the days of the New Deal, in the 1930s, government growth was virgin territory. It was like pushing west through a continent that seemed new and empty. There was plenty of room to move. The federal government was still small and relatively lean, the income tax was still new. America pushed on, creating what it created: federal programs, departments and initiatives, Social Security. In the mid-1960s, with the Great Society, more or less the same thing. Government hadn’t claimed new territory in a generation, and it pushed on—creating Medicare, Medicaid, new domestic programs of all kinds, the expansion of welfare and the safety net.

Now the national terrain is thick with federal programs, and with state, county, city and town entities and programs, from coast to coast. It’s not virgin territory anymore, it’s crowded. We are a nation fully settled by government. We are well into the age of the welfare state, the age of government. We know its weight, heft and demands, know its costs both in terms of money and autonomy, even as we know it has made many of our lives more secure, and helped many to feel encouragement.

But we know the price now. This is the historical context. The White House often seems disappointed that the big center, the voters in the middle of the spectrum, aren’t all that excited about following them on their bold new journey. But it’s a world America has been to. It isn’t new to us. And we don’t have too many illusions about it.

Scott Johnson strongly recommends Charles Krauthammer’s crucial new essay in the Weekly Standard, supplying an even better alternative title: The Will to Cower.

The single most important essay on the Obama administration’s first year is Charles Krauthammer’s “Decline is a choice.” It presents a sort of unified field theory of Obamaism, usefully collecting evidence to advance the argument that Obama’s domestic and foreign policy positions work together to support the decline of American power.

As Krauthammer more broadly puts it: “The current liberal ascendancy in the United States–controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture–has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome.”

This item, originally from Illinois Review, has become a viral email humor item.

Johannesburg, South Africa… A secret committee of three people of the 59th Miss World pageant, has shocked the beauty pageant world with an announcement that its judges have already chosen President Barack Obama of the United States to win the crown as Miss World 2009 and he will be crowned on December 12, 2009 at the Standton Convention Center in Johannesburg.

The 2008 Miss World, Kesenia Sukhinova off Russia , told reporters in Moscow that she was “stunned” by the news. “I swear I did not know President Obama was a contestant. The first 120 contestants were not even supposed to arrive in South Africa until Nov. 7,” Sukihinova said.

“This is so soon, it just does not seem right,” said a tearful contestant Joyce Mphande of Malawi. “President Obama did not even show up for the preliminary evening gown competition in Dubai last week.”

Another contestant, Diana Nilles of Luxembourg, said the Miss World crown for Mr. Obama is “a very good thing.” Nilles said, “We will show beauty contestants everywhere that our pageant is inclusive of diversity and we will never go back to the old pro-beauty prejudices of former President George W. Bush.”

But a very different opinion was expressed by The 2006 Miss World, Taťána KuchaÅ™ová of Slovakia who said, “This is so wrong on so many levels. I think he’s cute enough in an odd way, but he just passed up the swimsuit and all the other events. How is this fair to all the other 120 girls who have worked for this crown all year?” …

David Axelrod said at the White House that “the President did not seek this honor.” Axelrod also said that this crown should be “a source of pride to all Americans and proves that the three South Africans have “turned an important page” in rejecting “their past history of intoleance.

Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Valdimir Putin, Korean President Kim Jong Il, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez all sent telegrams of congratulations to President Obama. Brown said, “If the IOC had been as enlightened as the Miss World committee is, they could have at least had the gallantry recognize the sacrifice of Michelle Obama in going to Copenhagen and award her the 2016 Olympic Gold Medal for the Decathalon. That would have been justice for humiliating the President’s home town of Chicago in losing the host city bid.”

David Axelrod also assured White House reporters that Presient Obama’s telepompter will not be allowed to accept the Pultizer Prize for nonfiction next year should it be offered.

In evaluating the absurdity of the Nobel Committee’s Peace Prize Award to Barack Obama, as Bruce Walker suggests, it really puts the whole thing into perspective when you look at who didn’t win.

Few spectacles so clearly show the politicization of life than the surreally silly award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama. The Nobel Prize has long been a reflection of the whims of those who run political correctness. …

(For proof, consider) all the people who did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot, the greatest triumph for peace in world history. Pope John Paul II boldly reached out to end the historic distrust between the Catholic Church and Jews; he also showed how passive resistance could work in Poland; he also went around the world preaching peace and love; he also forgave the Moslem who tried to assassinate him. Alexander Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature, but not for Peace, even though he proved, perhaps more courageously than any man in modern history, that the pen could be mightier than the sword. Konrad Adenauer worked hard for a peaceful Germany at the end of the First World War; he opposed the Nazis and spent time in a concentration camp for that; after the Second World War ended, Adenauer reunited the three western sectors of Germany and reached out to Israel and offered, without being asked, for the Federal Republic of Germany to pay reparations to Israel. None of these magnificent champions of peace won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Peace Prize, like the support of Code Pink is based upon ideology and nothing else. So Obama, Gore, Carter, and Wilson have won the Peace Prize, but Reagan, who dedicated his last term in office to ridding the world of nuclear weapons and who actually won a world war without violence, does not. Willy Brandt, a thoroughly unlikable socialist West German chancellor, who left office in scandal, wins the award, while a magnificently noble conservative West German chancellor does not. So two Soviets who buy the rhetoric of the chic left – Gorbachev and Sakharov – win the award, while a much braver and clear voice for peace, Solzhenitsyn, does not?

We should know by now, if we ever needed to know, that the awards, compliments, and honors which the establishment of the world offers is offered only to those who have first paid homage to the ideology of the left. Awards given to communist terrorists, like Le Duc Tho, or anti-Semitic ogres like Jimmy Carter, are no badges of achievement: such awards are evidence of moral surrender.

Charles Krauthammer notes that Barack Obama and the democrats painted themselves into the corner they presently occupy. Watching how they deal with the situation will be interesting. Krauthammer compares Obama to Hamlet. I think Obama is more like Aethelred the Unready.

The genius of democracy is the rotation of power, which forces the opposition to be serious — particularly about things like war, about which until Jan. 20 of this year Democrats were decidedly unserious.

When the Iraq war (which a majority of Senate Democrats voted for) ran into trouble and casualties began to mount, Democrats followed the shifting winds of public opinion and turned decidedly antiwar. But needing political cover because of their post-Vietnam reputation for weakness on national defense, they adopted Afghanistan as their pet war.

“I was part of the 2004 Kerry campaign, which elevated the idea of Afghanistan as ‘the right war’ to conventional Democratic wisdom,” wrote Democratic consultant Bob Shrum shortly after President Obama was elected. “This was accurate as criticism of the Bush administration, but it was also reflexive and perhaps by now even misleading as policy.”

Which is a clever way to say that championing victory in Afghanistan was a contrived and disingenuous policy in which Democrats never seriously believed, a convenient two-by-four with which to bash George Bush over Iraq — while still appearing warlike enough to fend off the soft-on-defense stereotype.

Brilliantly crafted and perfectly cynical, the “Iraq war bad, Afghan war good” posture worked. Democrats first won Congress, then the White House. But now, unfortunately, they must govern. No more games. No more pretense.

So what does their commander in chief do now with the war he once declared had to be won but had been almost criminally under-resourced by Bush?

Perhaps provide the resources to win it?

You would think so. And that’s exactly what Obama’s handpicked commander requested on Aug. 30 — a surge of 30,000 to 40,000 troops to stabilize a downward spiral and save Afghanistan the way a similar surge saved Iraq.

That was more than five weeks ago. Still no response. Obama agonizes publicly as the world watches. …

Less than two months ago — Aug. 17 in front of an audience of veterans — the president declared Afghanistan to be “a war of necessity.” Does anything he says remain operative beyond the fading of the audience applause.

SNL answers the obvious question of what exactly Barack Obama has done in less than a year in office to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

4:12 video

Ann Althouse explains why he didn’t get the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Bruce Kesler has 10 reasons we should all be glad Obama won, starting with: Everyone should start their day with a good laugh. My wife laughed loudly when I shouted the news to her down the stairs.

Micky Kaus thinks he ought to turn it down. Lots of luck with that.

As her above photo proves, Anne Leary ran into Bill Ayers recently and they had a brief conversation.

There I was, sitting in Reagan National Monday morning, sipping a Starbucks by the United counter before going through security. I had a little time, so I was browsing through the news. Some military guys had borrowed a chair from my table. I looked up from time to time to enjoy the sun streaming through. That’s when I saw Bill Ayers, an instant blight. Scruffy, thinning beard, dippy earring, and the wirerims, heading to order. I gathered my things, got my camera ready, and snapped a shot right when he got his coffee.

I asked–what are you doing in D.C. Mr. Ayers?

For a moment I thought he might be on my flight back to Chicago. Charming. Initially I guess he thought I was laying claim to his coffee or something. He gave me an uneasy cheesy smile when he realized I was taking his picture. I asked him if he was speaking at GW? (Only I said GFW, guess I had the VFW on my mind) He said oh you mean GW, he said no…was trying to decide if I was a fan, then said he was giving a lecture in Arlington to a Renaissance group on education–that’s what I do, education–you shouldn’t believe everything you hear about me, you know nothing about me. I said, I know plenty–I’m from Chicago, a conservative blogger, and I’ll post this. …

Then, unprompted he said–I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said, oh, so you admit it. He said–Michelle asked me to. I looked at him. He seemed eager. He’s about my height, short. He went on to say–and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties. So I said, stop pulling my leg. Horrible thought. But he came again–I really wrote it, the wording was similar. I said I believe you probably heavily edited it. He said–I wrote it. I said–why would I believe you, you’re a liar.

He had no answer to that. Just looked at me. Then he turned and walked off, and said again his bit about my proving it and splitting the proceeds.

But the question remains–is Barack Obama a fraud? Is his myth-making creation and only major accomplishment a product of Bill Ayers’ imagination? (or his own) Is our President Barack Obama’s biography written by an unrepentant domestic terrorist?

Perhaps I’ll become Bill Ayers’ favorite conservative blogger and he can prove his authorship himself–turn over your notes Bill.

I’m inclined to think Ayers was just messing with her, mocking Jack Cashill’s contention that Dreams was ghostwritten by Ayers. “Prove it, and we’ll split the royalties.” I read as sarcasm.

But I wasn’t there, didn’t hear his tone. You never know. Anything’s possible. One could, by a greater reach of imagination, suppose Ayers was defiantly admitting the truth to taunt her, knowing there is no way she can possibly confirm it.

The government of the banana republic of Obamistan joined China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia in supporting a UN resolution calling for limits on free speech.

Bill Hobbs thinks there must have been some kind of misunderstanding. Maybe the Obama administration is dyslexic. They see “Free Speech” and think it says “Free Sheep”. Maybe not, too.

The Obama administration has marked its first foray into the UN human rights establishment by backing calls for limits on freedom of expression. The newly-minted American policy was rolled out at the latest session of the UN Human Rights Council, which ended in Geneva on Friday. …

For more than a decade, a UN resolution on the freedom of expression was shepherded through the Council, and the now defunct Commission on Human Rights which it replaced, by Canada. Over the years, Canada tried mightily to garner consensus on certain minimum standards, but the “reformed” Council changed the distribution of seats on the UN’s lead human rights body. In 2008, against the backdrop of the publication of images of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper, Cuba and various Islamic countries destroyed the consensus and rammed through an amendment which introduced a limit on any speech they claimed was an “abuse . . . [that] constitutes an act of racial or religious discrimination.”

The Obama administration decided that a revamped freedom of expression resolution, extracted from Canadian hands, would be an ideal emblem for its new engagement policy. So it cosponsored a resolution on the subject with none other than Egypt–a country characterized by an absence of freedom of expression. …

The new resolution, championed by the Obama administration, has a number of disturbing elements. It emphasizes that “the exercise of the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties and responsibilities . . .” which include taking action against anything meeting the description of “negative racial and religious stereotyping.” It also purports to “recognize . . . the moral and social responsibilities of the media” and supports “the media’s elaboration of voluntary codes of professional ethical conduct” in relation to “combating racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”

Pakistan’s Ambassador Zamir Akram, speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, made it clear that they understand the resolution and its protection against religious stereotyping as allowing free speech to be trumped by anything that defames or negatively stereotypes religion. The idea of protecting the human rights “of religions” instead of individuals is a favorite of those countries that do not protect free speech and which use religion–as defined by government–to curtail it.

Martin Peretz, at New Republic, is pessimistic about the future of the politics of personal charisma.

If Obama could not get Chicago over the finish line in Copenhagen, which was a test only of his charms, how will he persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear weapons capacity or the Arabs, to whom he has tilted (we are told) only tactically, to sit down without their 60 year-old map as guide to what they demand from Israel.

What I suspect is that the president is probably a clinical narcissist. This is not necessarily a bad condition if one maintains for oneself what the psychiatrists call an “optimal margin of illusion,” that is, the margin of hope that allows you to work. But what if his narcissism blinds him to the issues and problems in the world and the inveterate foes of the nation that are not susceptible to his charms?

Chicago will survive its disappointments and Obama will, as well. It is the other stage sets on which the president struts–like he strutted in Cairo and at the United Nations–that concern me.

I know that the president believes himself a good man. My nervy query to him is: “Does he believe America to be a good country?”