President Obama spent the time following his election, as well as his first weeks in office, talking about the “continuing disaster” and upcoming catastrophe that is the United States economy. As a result of such not so hopeful rhetoric, the “stimulus” bill and proposed additional bailouts, the “day-to-day gyrations of the stock market” now show a thirty percent loss of the Dow since election day. The Dow has dropped from 8,279 points to around 6,500 since Obama’s inauguration.

Supporters of Obama point to his still high approval ratings, but historically they are only average and in fact are lower than George Bush’s were at this time in his presidency (and that was following the contested election and Florida recount). The rapid drop of approval for Obama’s policies and his rising disapproval ratings may give his opponents hope for 2010 and 2012, but the media is on the job helping remind the public that being President is a tough job.

The New York Times has already done a story about how Obama is going gray  after only 44 days in office. (Evidently the job of president is not the only tough one. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is blaming exhaustion for her recent gaffes in Europe.)

Maybe if President Obama didn’t spend so much time concentrating on how to vilify radio talk show personalities he would have more time to rest. He does save time on memorizing speeches by using the teleprompter though.

I don’t buy the exhausted excuse, although candidate Obama has used it before during the campaign. Jim Geraghty reminded readers of a warning from 2007 that Obama wasn’t yet ready for the job, “The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.” That warning came from not yet Vice President Joe Biden and provides an alternate explanation for the problems the President has been having.

Another theory, one I am leaning toward, is that this is part of an overall strategy. In addition to taking advantage of crisis, as Rahm Emmanuel advocated (or “embracing” it as one report put it), to advance a radical legislative agenda, there is an upside to the current chaos and catastrophe. The worse things look now, the better they may look in a year or so by comparison. If the Obama economic policies do not completely destroy what is left of the economy, and if, at least in the short term, some improvement in employment figures and other economic indicators is seen over the next two years, the media will be able to revive the Obamessiah image that was so successful in 2008.

This all depends on how far Obama goes with his radical liberal agenda and how the public reacts to it. If the current tea party movement continues to grow, he and Democrats may really be in serious trouble. If we experience a national security crisis everything that has happened thus far in the Obama presidency could be completely overshadowed in ways no one can now predict. President Obama and his administration have given Republicans plenty of ammunition to use to fight the Democrats’ liberal domestic agenda, but if it is to be of any value they will have to use it right now.