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With the poll results out today that say 24% of Americans think Obama is a Muslim, many pundits are pointing to a May 2008 NY Times piece by Edward N. Luttwak.  Take a look:

BARACK OBAMA has emerged as a classic example of charismatic leadership — a figure upon whom others project their own hopes and desires. The resulting emotional intensity adds greatly to the more conventional strengths of the well-organized Obama campaign, and it has certainly sufficed to overcome the formidable initial advantages of Senator Hillary Clinton.

One danger of such charisma, however, is that it can evoke unrealistic hopes of what a candidate could actually accomplish in office regardless of his own personal abilities. Case in point is the oft-made claim that an Obama presidency would be welcomed by the Muslim world.

This idea often goes hand in hand with the altogether more plausible argument that Mr. Obama’s election would raise America’s esteem in Africa — indeed, he already arouses much enthusiasm in his father’s native Kenya and to a degree elsewhere on the continent.

But it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage. Senator Obama is half African by birth and Africans can understandably identify with him. In Islam, however, there is no such thing as a half-Muslim. Like all monotheistic religions, Islam is an exclusive faith.

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

Read the rest of it here.

The White House felt they had to respond to today’s poll results From Fox News Politics:

White House: “President Obama is a committed Christian, and his faith is an important part of his daily life. The president’s strong Christian faith is what guides him through (the nation’s) challenges but he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve.”

Jim Nolte adds this via Twitter:

Not good when the best evidence of your Christianity is 20 years spent in Reverend Wright’s church.

I guess the real problem for Obama is the fact that he’s been president for 19 months, in the public eye for years before that, written two autobiographies, and yet a tremendous number of Americans don’t think they know who he really is.  I don’t think George W. Bush ever had that problem.

Peter Kirsanow at The Corner has a nice essay on the president who doesn’t get America:

President Obama’s statements regarding the proposed Ground Zero mosque are the latest in a series of indicators that we are at a very peculiar pass: We have a president who doesn’t get America. For the first time in history we have a president whose default setting is in opposition to the general sensibilities of the American people. His behavior too frequently suggests that he’s playing a cosmic joke on Americans’ essential decency, considered patriotism, and belief in American exceptionalism.

You don’t need to have been a lecturer in constitutional law like Obama to know that the mosque’s backers have a right to build at Ground Zero. Polls show that Americans overwhelmingly acknowledge that right. But unlike the president, when his fellow Americans think of the construction of a mosque on Ground Zero, their view doesn’t begin and end with the First Amendment and local zoning ordinances. Rather, their view is of images that the mainstream media has done their best to airbrush out of our collective consciousness: Americans leaping out of windows and plunging — seemingly interminably — to their deaths to avoid incineration; first responders pulling charred remains from the smoking rubble of the collapsed towers; New Yorkers searching frantically for evidence that loved ones escaped the horror. That Obama, as the leader of the nation, fails to recognize that the situation calls for more than a sophomoric analysis that could be rendered by any first-year law student is disquieting.

As Dorothy Rabinowitz has noted, Obama’s alienation from the citizenry is just beginning to be more broadly revealed, but has been on display since the 2008 campaign.The media either failed to report it or chastised anyone who dared notice. When some remarked about Obama’s refusal to do something as simple as wear a flag lapel pin, they were pronounced unsophisticated and jingoistic. Obama’s casual stance during the playing of the “Star Spangled Banner” was declared a triviality. When Reverend Wright was caught shouting ” G–damn America!” those who wondered whether Obama’s 20 years in Wright’s pews might suggest ideological concurrence were dismissed as alarmist. When some expressed concern that Obama might agree with his wife that America is a “downright mean country” and that perhaps he, too, for the first time in his adult life, was proud of his country, they were told to grow up.

Then Obama’s association with Bill Ayers emerged and the mainstream media closed ranks and refused, as long as they could, to even report it. And when Obama expressed unalloyed contempt for Midwesterners who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment,” a phalanx formed to assure the public of his pure intentions.

There were other instances throughout the campaign and first months in office suggesting that for Obama, multiculturalism trumps national unity and moral relativism supersedes cultural confidence. His serial apologies for America, embrace of America-hating Hugo Chávez, and supplication to foreign thugs are consistent with a “blame America first” mentality that may be unremarkable for a political science professor but is toxic for the leader of the greatest nation in history.

But perhaps most emblematic of Obama’s self-identification was his proud declaration, before a vast crowd in Berlin, that he is a “citizen of the world.” Most Americans believe that that world would be a much darker place without the United States of America. And they would be pleased if their president could express that belief without being patronizing, self-referential, or defensive.

But to do so, it’s helpful to get America and Americans.

As I’ve said before, this president was raised to hate America. None of this is surprising given his past.

A carnival game operator got some attention the other day when it was revealed that patrons were able to throw things at a likeness of Obama.  After the Secret Service showed up he backed off a bit, but isn’t backing down:

Operators of a Jersey Shore boardwalk game have removed a mannequin representing President Barack Obama.

It has been replaced by effigies of former President George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton.

“It’s just to show we’re not anti-Democrat or anti-Republican,” Tommy Whalen told The Star-Ledger. He’s the manager of Lucky Leo’s where the “Walkin Charlie” game debuted this summer.

The game requires patrons to throw baseballs at plates held by the rotating caricatures.

A plastic bag — pink — was placed over the Obama character’s head after some people earlier this week said it was disrespectful to use the president’s likeness.

Whalen says a Secret Service agent visited the Seaside Heights concession on Wednesday and told him none of his employees had urged patrons to throw at or hurt Obama.

The Obama figure might not be packed away for good.

“Maybe we’ll put it back up in a couple weeks after everything dies down,” Whalen said.

As long as no express threats are being made to Obama himself, the game operator isn’t guilty of any crime. At worst this is just political speech and therefore protected.  He can bring Barry back anytime he wants to.

Maureen Dowd thinks his White House is too white:

The Obama White House is too white.

It has Barack Obama, raised in the Hawaiian hood and Indonesia, and Valerie Jarrett, who spent her early years in Iran.

But unlike Bill Clinton, who never needed help fathoming Southern black culture, Obama lacks advisers who are descended from the central African-American experience, ones who understand “the slave thing,” as a top black Democrat dryly puts it.

The first black president should expand beyond his campaign security blanket, the smug cordon of overprotective white guys surrounding him — a long political tradition underscored by Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 when she complained about the “smart-ass white boys” from Walter Mondale’s campaign who tried to boss her around.

Otherwise, this administration will keep tripping over race rather than inspiring on race.

The West Wing white guys who pushed to ditch Shirley Sherrod before Glenn Beck could pounce not only didn’t bother to Google, they weren’t familiar enough with civil rights history to recognize the name Sherrod. And they didn’t return the calls and e-mail of prominent blacks who tried to alert them that something was wrong.

Charles Sherrod, Shirley’s husband, was a Freedom Rider who, along with the civil rights hero John Lewis, was a key member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the ‘60s.

So, because she has a prominent last name from the civil rights struggle Obama shouldn’t have fired her for racism. Tortured reasoning at best.

Let’s move on down the column:

We may not have a “nation of cowards” on race, as Attorney General Eric Holder contended, but we may have a West Wing of cowards on race.

The president appears completely comfortable in his own skin, but it seems he feels that he and Michelle are such a huge change for the nation to absorb that he can be overly cautious about pushing for other societal changes for blacks and gays. At some level, he acts like the election was enough; he shouldn’t have to deal with race further. But he does.

His closest advisers — some of the same ones who urged him not to make the race speech after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright issue exploded — are so terrified that Fox and the Tea Party will paint Obama as doing more for blacks that they tiptoe around and do less. “Who knew that the first black president would make it even harder on black people?” asked a top black Democratic official.

It’s the same impulse that caused Obama campaign workers to refuse to let Muslim women with head scarves sit in camera range during a rally. It’s the same impulse that has left the president light-years behind W. on development help for Africa. In their rush to counteract attempts to paint Obama as a radical/Muslim/socialist, Obama staffers can behave in insensitive ways themselves.

“I don’t think a single black person was consulted before Shirley Sherrod was fired — I mean c’mon, “ said Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, a black lawmaker so temperate that he agreed with an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal on Friday by Senator James Webb of Virginia, which urged that “government-directed diversity programs should end.”

“The president’s getting hurt real bad,” Clyburn told me. “He needs some black people around him.” He said Obama’s inner circle keeps “screwing up” on race: “Some people over there are not sensitive at all about race. They really feel that the extent to which he allows himself to talk about race would tend to pigeonhole him or cost him support, when a lot of people saw his election as a way to get the issue behind us. I don’t think people elected him to disengage on race. Just the opposite.”

Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s House delegate, agreed: “The president needs some advisers or friends who have a greater sense of the pulse of the African-American community, or who at least have been around the mulberry bush.”

It appears, based on these comments, that Obama is not “authentically” black. In other words, he doesn’t have slave blood in his past and wasn’t around during the civil rights struggles and therefore doesn’t understand black people. He needs a black person in the White House to translate all this for him, kind of like Bo Snerdley, the official Obama Criticizer for Rush Limbaugh and the guy who on occasion translates Rush into ebonics for the hip-hop crowd.

If Martin Luther King Jr. was still alive this would drive him absolutely crazy.  It’s so far off from the ideal he preached.

How the mighty have fallen (from John Fund):

Democrats will be gulping this morning at the Quinnipiac Poll’s latest results. For the first time in the survey’s history, Americans believe by a 48% to 40% margin that President Obama doesn’t deserve re-election. Almost as stinging, a plurality believe the country would have been better off if John McCain had beaten Mr. Obama in 2008.

The Quinnipiac Poll is pored over by political observers because it has a good predictive record and because its large sample size of nearly 2200 people implies a much smaller margin of error than most surveys — around 2 percentage points.

Mr. Obama’s approval rating continues to slide, and is dragging his party down. While last July Mr. Obama had a 57% positive rating, Quinnipiac now pegs him at just 44% approval — a number below President Bill Clinton’s approval rating just before his party lost control of Congress in 1994. When asked which party they plan to vote for this November, likely voters in the Quinnipiac survey picked Republicans by 43% to 38%. This was despite an expressed lack of confidence in the ability of Republican leaders in Congress to tackle the nation’s problems.

I’m sure that by this point in his presidency John McCain would have done plenty of things to tick off conservatives, but he certainly would never have approved all of the crazy left stuff that we’ve seen come out of Congress these past 18 months.

Richard Cohen tells us why in a Washington Post piece:

But the fallacy in all of them is apparent when — as always happens — Obama is likened to Ronald Reagan. (Shrum does this.) The similarities are superficial, and foremost among them is the fact that Reagan too had dismal numbers at this state of his presidency — a consequence of a steep recession. In fact, the Republicans lost House seats in the 1982 midterm elections, just as the Democrats are fated to do, according to every conceivable political seer. Reagan, of course, went on to win reelection by a landslide and has since become a Mount Rushmorian figure. Break out the chisels.

The comparison to Reagan may give Obama cheer, but it is not really apt. For even in Reagan’s darkest days when, according to Gallup, six out of 10 Americans reported that they did not like the job he was doing, an astounding six in 10 nevertheless said they liked the man himself. He was, of course, phenomenally charming, authentic and schooled at countless soundstages in appearing that way. Just as important, the public had faith in the consistency of his principles, agree or not. This was the Reagan Paradox and it helped lift his presidency.

No one is accusing Obama of being likable. He is not unlikable, but he lacks Reagan’s (or Bill Clinton’s) warmth. What’s more, his career has been brief. He led no movement, was spokesman for no ideology and campaigned like a Nike sneaker — change instead of swoosh. He seems distant. No Irish jokes from him. For the average voter, he casts no shadow.

Reagan, by contrast, had been around forever. He was not defined solely by gauzy campaign ads but by countless speeches, two contentious and highly controversial terms as California governor, and a previous race for the presidency. There was never a question about who Reagan was and what he stood for. Not so Obama. About all he shares with Reagan at this point are low ratings.

What has come to be called the Obama Paradox is not a paradox at all. Voters lack faith in him making the right economic decisions because, as far as they’re concerned, he hasn’t. He went for health-care reform, not jobs. He supported the public option, then he didn’t. He’s been cold to Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu and then all over him like a cheap suit. Americans know Obama is smart. But we still don’t know him. Before Americans can give him credit for what he’s done, they have to know who he is. We’re waiting.

Fifty-three percent of American voters bought into the Obama mythology of hope and change. Some of them voted for him because he was a Democrat. Many voted for him because he was black. Some because he wasn’t John McCain. All of them made a mistake for which Americans will be paying for generations.

Some of those people, thankfully, are waking up:

A year after President Barack Obama’s political honeymoon ended, his job approval rating has dropped to a negative 44 – 48 percent, his worst net score ever, and American voters say by a narrow 39 – 36 percent margin that they would vote for an unnamed Republican rather than President Obama in 2012, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 48 – 43 percent approval for Obama in a May 26 national poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University and a 57 – 33 percent approval last July, just before the political firestorm created by opposition to his health care plan galvanized political opponents and turned independent voters against him.

In this latest survey of more than 2,000 voters, independent voters disapprove of Obama 52 – 38 percent and say 37 – 27 percent they would vote for a Republican contender in 2012.

American voters also say 48 – 40 percent Obama does not deserve reelection in 2012.

Reagan was able to turn his numbers around with the force of his personality and good policies. Obama has neither going for him.

Yes, it’s pretty meaningless at this point in the process but it can tell us something about the mood of the electorate.  From PPP:

(Obama) trails Mitt Romney 46-43, Mike Huckabee 47-45, Newt Gingrich 46-45, and is even tied with Sarah Palin at 46. The only person tested he leads is Jan Brewer, who doesn’t have particularly high name recognition on the national level at this point. . . .

There are two things driving these strong poll numbers for the Republican candidates. The first is a lead with independents in every match up. Romney leads 48-35 with them, Gingrich is up 50-39, Huckabee has a 46-40 advantage, Palin’s up 47-42, and even Brewer has a 38-37 edge.

The independents put Obama in office, and they can take him out.

If she chooses to run against Obama, at this point she would win and we’d probably be on our way to the first woman president and four more years of runaway liberalism.  Pete du Pont, former Republican Senator, is actually promoting her for president in today’s Wall Street Journal:

So what can be done to change America’s policies and make our economy stronger? For one thing, we could elect a president with different thinking. Almost any Republican candidate would have that, and, as we will see in a moment, there is one obvious Democrat who would change our course too.

I have to stop him right there – why does he think that Hillary’s policies would be any different than Obama’s? She might be more effective in communicating and working with Congress, and she’d have close counsel from the former president, but the net effect would be the same.

Du Pont gives some reasons why he thinks Hillary would be a good choice:

First, as Peggy Noonan wrote earlier this month, the conclusion one hears from most “normal” American people is that the president “is in over his head, and out of his depth.” Even most progressives agree that “the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment,” according to Eric Alterman of The Nation. That means there’s a big opportunity for Mrs. Clinton.

Second, she is physically and intellectually strong enough to take on a difficult campaign. She showed that running against Obama two years ago.

Third, she is one of the most experienced prospective candidates the Democratic Party has had in a long while: wife of a governor, U.S. first lady, senator and now secretary of state. This is a good record to run on as someone who knows how the government works.

Fourth, she is an experienced foreign-policy adviser who understands the threats to our national security: unresolved conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, rising threats of nuclear capability in Iran and North Korea, and uncertainties in Pakistan.

Fifth, experience will be even more important to voters in the 2012 presidential election, whose 2008 gamble on someone with little experience is proving costly.

Finally, Washington’s deadly left-liberal policies that have propelled the American economy in a very bad direction can be turned around. If Mrs. Clinton made the case that America must get rid of the huge debt the current administration has created, must create much better economic growth with lower tax rates, and must strongly assist employer job creation, she would appeal to a broad voter coalition.

Let’s not forget that a major reason Hillary’s husband was able to have a relatively successful presidency is that he governed during a fairly quiet time in the world (he successfully ignored several terror attacks against U.S. targets), and he had a Republican congress for the last six years that got spending under control while an economic bubble grew…but then burst shortly before he left office. Since George Bush didn’t spend all his time blaming Clinton for it (and the media wouldn’t report it if he did), Bush took most of the hits for the economic mess he inherited.

I think Du Pont is being very generous to suggest that Hillary has the same political gifts as her husband.  She may have him hanging around chasing interns, but she would be a very different president.

Du Pont goes on in his article to suggest that Obama can stop this challenge by making her his VP candidate in 2012.  I don’t think that will happen because I don’t think she’d take the job.  Why be saddled to Obama who at this point looks like a loser?  Having her in the 2nd spot would not convince voters to give Obama another four years.

Back on January 5th I offered a prediction of what I think Hillary’s future will look like.  I still think this is a very likely scenario:

Here’s a scenario that I think may become more realistic as the year unfolds. Should Obama and the Dems continue to slide, and especially if the Dems take a bloodbath in November, I look for Hillary to resign the Secretary of State’s job sometime in early 2011. Nobody will believe she wants to “spend more time with her family” so she’ll have to come up with another excuse. In reality, she’ll be setting the table for a primary challenge to Obama in 2012.

And she’ll be very popular. She barely lost the nomination in 2008 and given Obama’s performance and her work as Secretary of State, her star probably shines brighter today than ever. For one thing, she hasn’t been in the news all that much and we haven’t had to listen to her. That’s gotta help.

So, with Hillary out of the Secretary of State’s office, who will Obama choose to replace her? Here’s where the scenario becomes even more interesting – Joe Biden. Biden’s many years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be cited as the main reason to move him to SoS, though the real reason will have more to do with the fact that Biden will be a drag on the 2012 ticket. He’s not seen as a viable future candidate for 2016 and frankly people are a little bit afraid that something will happen to Obama and we’ll get stuck with President Biden.

This will give Obama and his political crew the opportunity to choose his potential successor, someone younger and more attractive as a 2016 candidate. Confirmation could be a bit problematic should the GOP pick up a bunch of Senate seats this year, but I don’t know if they will have the stomach to filibuster a vice presidential nominee.

Meanwhile Hillary will be the Ted Kennedy of 2012, challenging the sitting president the way Kennedy challenged Carter in 1980 – only she’ll win. The nomination, that is, but not necessarily the White House. That will depend on both the GOP nominee and voter feelings about Democrats in general. After four years of unbridled liberalism the voters may not be willing to take a chance that Hillary will be any better. Her history certainly suggests she just as much a lefty as Obama, though possibly more competent.

Keep your eyes on Hillary – she could be the early warning sign of what’s to come for Obama and the Democrats.

It’s looking more likely every day.

Peggy Noonan, who lost her love for Obama some time ago, writes about the current woes befalling The One:

The president is starting to look snakebit. He’s starting to look unlucky, like Jimmy Carter. It wasn’t Mr. Carter’s fault that the American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran, but he handled it badly, and suffered. He defied the rule of the King in “Pippin,” the Broadway show of Carter’s era, who spoke of “the rule that every general knows by heart, that it’s smarter to be lucky than it’s lucky to be smart.” Mr. Carter’s opposite was Bill Clinton, on whom fortune smiled with eight years of relative peace and a worldwide economic boom. What misfortune Mr. Clinton experienced he mostly created himself. History didn’t impose it.

But Mr. Obama is starting to look unlucky, and–file this under Mysteries of Leadership–that is dangerous for him because Americans get nervous when they have a snakebit president. They want presidents on whom the sun shines.

Joe Rago and James Freeman discuss BP’s caving to the Obama administration, the president’s pivot to cap and trade, and securities litigation reform.

It isn’t Mr. Obama’s fault that an oil rig blew in the Gulf and a gusher resulted. He already had two wars and the great recession. But the lack of adequate federal government response appropriately redounds on him. In a Wall Street Journal investigation published Thursday, reporters Jeffrey Ball and Jonathan Weisman wrote the federal government at first moved quickly, but soon “faltered.” “The federal government, which under the law is in charge of fighting large spills, had to make things up as it went along.” It hadn’t anticipated a spill this big. The first weekend in May, when water was rough, contractors hired by BP to lay boom “mostly stayed ashore,” according to a local official. “Shrimpers took matters into their own hands, laying 18,000 feet of boom,” compared to about 4,000 feet by BP’s contractors.

The administration’s failure to take impressive action after the spill dinged its reputation for competence. The president’s failure to turn things around Tuesday night with a speech damaged his reputation as a man whose rhetorical powers are such that he can turn things around with a speech. He lessened his own mystique. Reaction among his usual supporters was, in the words of Time’s Mark Halperin, “fierce, unforeseen disappointment.” Dan Froomkin of the Huffington Post called the speech “profoundly underwhelming,” a “feeble call to action.” Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich called the speech “vapid.” Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times said the president looked “awkward and robotic.” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann famously said “It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days.” Chris Matthews scored “a lot of meritocracy, a lot of blue ribbon talk.” Mr. Olbermann, on Mr. Obama’s well-written peroration: “It’s nice but, again, how? Where was the ‘how’ in this speech when the nation is crying out for ‘how’?”

There’s a lot more at the link.

Noonan doesn’t address the big difference between Jimmuh Carter and Barack Obama: Carter had actual executive level experience as Governor of Georgia. At least Obama can claim that he had no experience running anything and therefore should not be held responsible for not knowing what to do now. That’s about his only hope.

And don’t worry, some lefty Obama apologist will make that very twisted argument pretty soon.

A liberal polling group has discovered that Obama’s endorsement can be a campaign killer:

Democrats are going to have to think really carefully about how they deploy Barack Obama for campaigning this fall. Polls we’ve conducted nationally and in several different states over the last few weeks have found that a candidate being endorsed by Obama is much more likely to elicit a negative response from Republican voters than a positive one from Democrats.

PPP’s most recent national survey found that while Obama had a positive approval rating at 48/47, only 33% of voters were more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by him while 48% said support from Obama would make them less likely to vote for someone. That’s because only 64% of voters who approve of the President say his endorsement would make them more inclined to vote for a candidate, but 91% who disapprove say Obama’s support makes it less likely they would vote for one of his preferred candidates.

This really isn’t much of a surprise to anyone who watched the results in New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania where Obama-endorsed candidates fell.  My guess is his campaigning this fall will be confined to districts and races where Democrats are a lock.