From Muppet Studios — Ringing of the Bells.

Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the coffee table, and try to keep the spitballs off the screen please. This is Late Late Night FireDogLake, where off topic is the topic … so dive in. What’s on your mind?

(photo: Rob Flickenger)

With 2012 just a month away, the president is clearly feeling the pressure from his Republican challengers… no, no, not to develop a more compelling policy agenda to win the American people’s support; don’t be ridiculous.

What I mean is that with all the media attention on the mind-boggling farce known as the GOP nomination contest, President Obama must want equal time in terms of folks making fun of him, too.  How else to explain this report from Sam Stein of the Huffington Post yesterday:

In his past two campaign speeches, President Barack Obama has adopted a construct that puts particular emphasis on how his 2008 promise of change has resulted in practical life improvement.

At a fundraiser Wednesday night in New York City, the new line was on display, with the president deploying the phrase “Change is…” on a dozen occasions.

“Change is the first bill I signed into law — a law that says you get an equal day’s work — somebody who puts in an equal day’s work should get equal day’s pay.”

“Change is the decision we made to rescue the auto company from collapse, even when some politicians were saying we should let Detroit go bankrupt.” [...]

And so on.

The formulation actually debuted at a Nov. 14 Obama campaign event at the Aulani Disney Resort in Hawaii, where he declared “Change is…” on 10 occasions.

Now, let’s be clear, there are reasons beyond sheer novelty to be grateful for this new slogan.  For one thing, it signals the possible retirement (or at least downgrading) of the incessant “We Can’t Wait” PR campaign, which Obama himself had begun to mock.  Even better, it further buries the cloying, puke-worthy “Winning the Future” theme his re-election team had adopted initially.

That was back when Team Obama apparently thought imitating Bill Clinton’s lamest rhetoric would be enough to sail into another term — that is, before they realized that 2-3 years of persistent pooch-screwing policywise had soured the public enough on Barack to demand a more energetic approach.  (It’s understandable, in a way… as Mike Tyson famously said once, “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.”)

As Stein notes, though, there’s a danger to this new tack.  A president’s record of accomplishment, some say, is like the meaning of jazz; if people don’t grasp it intuitively, they never will.  In other words, simply having to explain is an admission of failure all by itself.

Even so, at least there’s some justice in President Obama having to grapple personally with the inadequacy of the “change” he’s delivered after the promises of more than three years ago.  (The rest of us already have plenty of experience in that regard.)

But that’s not why I’ve called you all here on this Friday evening.  No, the purpose of this post is to give you the chance to fill in the blanks of that tantalizingly open-ended “Change is…” slogan, using your finely honed snark.  Ready?… go!

Photo credit: Jacob Boetter

So today Gallup has decided to point out that Obama has the second-lowest approval rating (after Jimmy Carter) in the oh-so-critical make-or-break “November of his third year in office” of any elected president since World War II, which certainly doesn’t sound arbitrary at all.

They go on to observe that presidents with approval ratings under 50% on Election Day don’t generally get re-elected, with the implication that Obama’s 43% approval rating does not bode well for his chances if it doesn’t improve before then.  And intuitively, that makes sense: If more than half of the population doesn’t like the incumbent, they’re not going to get a majority of the vote, right?

But here’s the thing: No president runs for election in a vacuum, or against “Generic Democrat” or “Generic Republican.”  Carter and Bush I weren’t just unpopular, they also had to run against skilled and charismatic politicians in Reagan and Clinton (plus a strong third-party candidate in Poppy’s case).  Bush II, on the other hand, got to put his 48% approval rating up against John Kerry, who was an uninspiring stiff and still almost won.

The incumbent doesn’t have to have a 50+ approval rating, just a majority of voters who prefer him to the alternative. The lower the approval rating, the worse the alternative has to be for the incumbent to still be preferable, but it’s not impossible.

Keep that in mind when trying to predict the outcome next year.  Obama is very unpopular, and deservedly so, but consider the alternatives.  He will be facing either Mitt Romney, who is like a Republican Kerry with less love from his base, or a right-wing caricature like Gingrich or Perry or Bachmann.  Not only that, but Obama is a better campaigner than any of the Republicans – although it will be interesting to see how well his inspiring rhetoric works the second time around after everyone’s seen how hollow it is.

If Romney doesn’t say or do anything epically tone-deaf at an inopportune moment, and if the GOP base holds their noses and turns out, I can see a majority of voters choosing him over Obama.  But I think Obama would have to be at least 10-15 points lower than he is now (which could well happen) before a majority of voters would consider any of the far-right clowns to be a definite improvement.

There’s an old joke about two hikers who are ambushed by a bear.  One of them quickly swaps his boots for sneakers, explaining to the other, “I don’t have to outrun the bear.  I just have to outrun you.”  Obama doesn’t have to outrun the bear.  He just has to outrun Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.