James Pethokoukis

Quite, says my pal Jay Cost over at TheWeeklyStandard:

President Obama’s overall job approval is split 47-47, but the numbers underneath it are not good at all. On the economy, AP-GfK has him at -6, Gallup at -17, Quinnipiac at -26, and CBS at -14. On health care, AP-GfK has him above water (+4), but Gallup and Quinnipiac have him at -17 and -16, respectively. Meanwhile, check out the right track/wrong track numbers, which are as negative as they have been at any point during Obama’s tenure.

All this tells me that those top line approval numbers are very, very weak for the president. They are probably being propped up by people who are not happy with the way things are going, don’t particularly like the job the president has done with specific issues, but have not yet connected all the dots. Just wait. As the Republican nomination battle begins in earnest, you’re going to see Jon Huntsman, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and others making the same kind of explicit argument that President Obama is a failure. In other words, they’re going to connect the dots for people, just like Trump did in this interview.

What happens to Obama’s job approval then? What happens when these Republican nominees start linking high unemployment, high gas prices, out of control deficits, and partisan gridlock to Obama?

And Jay can also add in rising interest rates  (Fed could be tightening in 2012) and the lousy real estate market. A long way to go to November 2012.