'There's that Darn False Narrative Again'

At the Daily Caller, Jon Ward writes, “Obama approval rating takes dive as he faces anti-business charge.”

The Obama administration? Anti-business? I just can’t see it myself. But as Ward notes:

President Obama’s approval rating has shown major slippage in recent days and weeks, but has dipped noticeably this week as questions of whether he is anti-business have grown louder.

A new poll out Friday showed a new benchmark: a majority of Americans now disapprove of Obama’s job performance. The Economist/YouGov survey of 1,000 U.S. citizens from July 3 to 6 showed that 52 percent disapprove of Obama’s job performance. And Obama’s approval in the poll was at 43 percent, a concerning number for the White House.

Gallup’s daily tracking poll, which averages all polls over the last three days, showed Obama Friday at 44 percent approval and 48 percent disapproval.

The Real Clear Politics polling average, which measures Obama’s approval rating over the last three weeks, shows Obama at 46.3 percent approval and 47.9 disapproval.

The polling shows a clear dive downward in recent days, in a week when the political conversation has shifted decisively to the question of whether Obama is anti-business and whether his signature agenda items — sweeping changes to the health care system and the financial regulatory architecture — have created uncertainty for the business sector that is keeping nearly $2 trillion in cash reserves on the sidelines.

Uncertainty in the business sector over an anti-business far left president ? Say, that rings a bell, somehow…

Nahh, David Axelrod says it’s all part of the “False Narrative,” as Peter Wehner writes at Commentary:

Dan Balz of the Washington Post has written an article on President Obama’s dismal standing among independents (it stands at 38 percent approval according to Gallup, an 18-point difference from a year ago). Balz quotes both Republican and Democratic strategists in searching for the reason for this perilous polling condition: high unemployment, an unpopular health-care law, bigger government, a liberal governing agenda, lack of bipartisanship, and the inability to change the culture of Washington. And then we find this:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said that the criticism of Obama as a big-spending liberal grows out of decisions the president felt he had to make to prevent a depression. “We were forced to do things from the start to deal with this economic crisis that helped create a false narrative about spending and deficits that’s had some impact on independent voters,” Axelrod said. “And that’s something we have to work on.”

Ah, yes, there’s that darn False Narrative again.

According to the True Narrative, Obama the Great acted with wisdom and courage to forestall another Great Depression. The charges of profligate spending have been manufactured out of thin air. The stimulus package has been a spectacular success. ObamaCare will bend the cost curve down. The economy is doing swimmingly. The outreach to the Muslim world has led to unprecedented breakthroughs. Nation after nation — Iran, Turkey, Russia, China, Brazil, Venezuela — are bending to Obama’s will. And all the problems America faces — from nearly 10 percent unemployment to polarization to acne among teens — are owing to Obama’s predecessor.

Yet because the Forces of Darkness so thoroughly and completely control the media and dominate the messaging wars — because Republicans have such fantastic spokesmen as RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Democrats have no bully pulpits available to them — Obama has become massively unpopular among independents. The White House, you see, has a message problem, but no other. Once they get their message out better, Obama will once again stride atop the political world.

Within the walls of the White House, it seems, Barack Obama is still viewed by people like Mr. Axelrod as a near-mythical figure. To much of the rest of the nation, he appears to be presiding over a failing presidency. If Obama and his top advisers persist in their self-delusion — which is unusual even for those working in a profession (politics) prone to self-delusion — they and their party are going to face, sooner or later, a brutal awakening.

As Ace writes regarding The One’s inability to make friends and influence people abroad:

It’s kind of amazing that every single criticism of, or lack of proper enthusiasm for, Barack Obama is rooted in some sort of bitter, clingy ignorance and malice. Apparently not a single critique of him is well-founded, or founded upon anything at all, really, except hatred and mental retardation.

Part of the False Narrative? We really just don’t understand how humble the guy is.

If the Republicans take back the House this fall, or score significant gains, I wonder if we’ll see some variation on Al Gore’s “rightwing-controlled media” meme dusted off, which looked hilarious back in 2002, and even more so today, particularly in light of the JournoList scandal, and the last three years of legacy media cheerleading for The One, both before and after he took office.

Damn that false narrative! And it’s even being spread by liberals who backed Obama in 2008 as well!