He wrote some time ago that Obama never really did anything to establish a track record that could be scrutinized, except for the list of a series of posts he held for a brief time.

Obama was always busy applying and running for the next post.  He never really wrote anything (excepting his memoir which of course is really an application paper)
He never served anywhere for very long, for he and all the hopeful folks around him were always pushing for the next better slot.

Well finally Obama got to be the President after one of the most hated men in history and you would think that at least he would pause and establish a record.  Oops, it turns out that he is too busy seeking the next job, a 2nd term.

Full poll results.

Emphasis mine.

Fewer than a quarter of people see signs of improvement in the economy, and two-thirds say they believe the country is on the wrong track overall, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted June 17-20.

[snip]

By a 44 percent to 34 percent margin, Americans say they believe they are worse off than when President Barack Obama took office in early 2009, when the U.S. was in the depths of a recession compounded by the September 2008 financial crisis and the economy was losing as many as 820,000 jobs a month.

The gloom covers the immediate future, with fewer than 1 in 10 people expecting unemployment to return to pre-recession levels within the next two years, and it extends to the next generation. More than half of respondents say their children are destined to have a lower standard of living than they do, upending a traditional touchstone of the American Dream.

And here it is:

As the public grasps for solutions, the Republican Party is breaking through in the message war on the budget and economy. A majority of Americans say job growth would best be revived with prescriptions favored by the party: cuts in government spending and taxes, the Bloomberg Poll shows. Even 40 percent of Democrats share that view.

[the Republican Party - really?  Someone needs to tell Kent - 2-trillion-is-not-enough - Conrad (D)]

"Unless you limit the actual money coming in to the government and give businesses a break, I don't think you're going to have a bounce-back in the economy," says poll respondent Michael Jefferys, 37, a business analyst for a building supply manufacturer. The economy "is at a teetering point: Depending on what changes are made, it could take a dramatic fall or start to revive," says Jefferys, a political independent who lives in Pitman, New Jersey.

[snip]

Though Americans rate unemployment and the economy as a greater concern than the deficit and government spending, the issues are now closely connected. Sixty-five percent of respondents say they believe the size of the federal deficit is "a major reason" the jobless rate hasn't dropped significantly.

[snip]

Fewer than half cite failures of Obama's economic stimulus or cuts in government spending as contributing reasons. Fifty-eight percent say the economy needs time to heal in the wake of the financial crisis.

Republican criticism of the federal budget growth has gained traction with the public. Fifty-five percent of poll respondents say cuts in spending and taxes would be more likely to bring down unemployment than would maintaining or increasing government spending, as Obama did in his 2009 stimulus package.

Even with their concerns about the deficit, Americans aren't ready to pay more in taxes: More than 6 of 10 say they are unwilling to do so, even as 77 percent say it's inevitable taxes will rise as a result of a deal to curb the deficit.

The economy is not the only thing that's depressed.

NO More dissing on 0-$ell out till AFTER the election !!!

(ya know, when he renews bush's community theft ...AGAIN!)

I'm looking forward to writing in my own name for President of the United States, and I seriously don't give a rat's ass which lying fascist beats 0-$ell-0ut.

His actions suggest that he wants long-term spending cuts. Like it or not, that's the real Obama.

Obama is not incompetent, nor is he stupid.

He made it to President, after all.

If he keeps on getting the results he keeps on getting, it's because those are the results he was aiming for.

Everything he's 'accomplishing' he's accomplishing on purpose, because it's what he set out to accomplish.

And on another note... by the end of 2012, after his Afghanistan "drawdown", he'll have twice as many troops in Afghanistan as there were there on the day he was inaugurated.

His actions suggest that that is what he wants.

Like it or not, that's the real Obama.

Ever wonder why he wears that big grin so often? It must take nearly everything he's got to not burst out laughing.

And before someone notes that cutting spending to create jobs is not a policy that will result in a better tomorrow for America, and thus would not secure Obama's legacy, I'll just note this: the media of tomorrow will see balancing the budget and cutting the deficit as heroic actions. The Sturm und Drang of suffering people will prove an easily forgettable sidenote -- the people suffering today are rarely on the TV now, they'll be on the TV even more rarely 10 years from now.

Based on us continuing to do what we've been doing we will have twice as much debt as GDP in a decade.

We have to cut everything.

The left is delusional if they think that any president and any congress won't eventually cut everything.

We can cut it now or we can cut it later.

I can garuntee you that cutting it later will be much more painful and you'll like it even less then you like the cutting on the table now.

As for taxes keep dreaming.  We tax enough already.   As I've said before no matter the tax rate we get about 20% of GDP in tax revenue.  Never much more and never much less.   We spend way more then 20% in GDP.  That's while we're in the hole.

Tax cuts won't help the economy and tax raises won't help the debt.

The only thing that will help the economy is less government spending and less debt.

Obama and his team decided the best way to recapture his central political identity -- even at risk of weaking Dems in negotiations -- was to re-emphasize his role as a conciliator who simply refuses to accept that Washington needs to be the way it is and who won't ever abandon his faith that differences can be bridged.

We've discussed where unemployment will be at the time of the next election and there have been suggestions that it will be 9-10%.  I've tended to think that if we were at 7 or the low 8s, Obama and the dems would be OK.

Despite the waive of bad or OK news, here is the latest prediction from the CBO:

Between 7.8 and 8.2 percent in 2012.

Before the waive starts, I know that may or may not be the true unemployment number and yes, I get it, Americans are still suffering with unemployment that high  I get all of that and agree with some of it.  

It's just that fro a purely political perspective, Obama is likely going to be able to say that the first half of his term was spent stopping unemployment from rising and the second half was spent getting the number to where it was when he took office.  The argument will be that the second term will be about continuing the trend so that we're in the 5's when he leaves.