COMMENT ON THE DECLINE - AT 10:42 A.M. ET:  I've often written that some of the best commentary on American politics comes from British observers.  Nile Gardiner, a British conservative analyst based in Washington, dissects the elements of President Obama's decline, something we really hadn't expected to occur until much later:

To add to Obama’s woes, unemployment in America now stands at a staggering 9.5 percent and rising (the same level as the Euro area), compared to 7.2 per cent in the UK and 5.2 per cent in Japan, with the U.S. economy continuing to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs every month. According to figures cited by The New York Times, over 3.3 million jobs have been lost since January of this year.

They can't blame it on Bush forever.

As recent Gallup surveys have shown, the United States remains a largely conservative nation, and Obama’s brand of high spending, high taxing neo-socialism is increasingly rejected by the American public. While much of Europe, including Britain, is moving rightwards, America is the only major country in the Western world whose leadership is dramatically moving to the left. Although he ran for the presidency largely as a centrist, Obama’s government is without doubt the most left-wing administration in American history.

That nails it.  The Europeans are learning their lesson, and we're forgetting what they've learned.

If he is not careful, Barack Obama may end up as one of the least popular presidents in American history. His dream of re-making the world’s greatest power into a large-scale version of modern-day Germany - with high taxation, dominant trade unions, overbearing government bureaucracy, stifling employment regulations, low defence spending, de-nuclearisation, a naive emphasis on soft power, and a constant desire to apologise for the past – is a nightmarish vision that fortunately is opposed by a growing majority of Americans.

COMMENT:  This is clear-headed thinking, and a sharp warning to a president who spent a good chunk of his formative years being tutored by people who either don't understand the American spirit, or despise it.

Crunch time has come early for Barack Obama.  The direction he takes, and the good or bad luck he has domestically and in foreign affairs, will determine the fat of his presidency, and whether he gets that coveted second term.

July 25, 2009