Obama - great candidate, terrible President

Two Democrat supporting friends in the same number of days have come to the same conclusion: President Obama is a let down. Many Republican supporting friends reached this conclusion many months ago. What though of those independent minded American voters who will decide next year's election?

At the moment it is unclear exactly where they will put the cross on the voting slip - with the election still 14 months away and Obama's Republican opponent far from certain this is understandable.

The polling however doesn't look good for Obama. The latest rasmussen tracking poll  has a generic Republican candidate on the highest level of support to date against President Obama, with the generic Republican earning 49% support, while the president picks up 41% of the vote.  Of course the wrong Republican candidate could reverse this polling very quickly.

In another poll for the Washington Post/ABC News, Obama had a disapproval rating of 53 per cent, and 77 per cent said the country was on the wrong track. Perhaps the most telling of all these numbers was that a third said President Obama's economic policies had done more harm than good.

With a little over 24 hours to go until his set piece speech on job creation, speculation has alreday started on what precisely he will say and what measures he will call for. The consensus seems to be that it will be more of the same. There is a real opportunity here for the Republicans. If they can successfully paint his raft of measures as the same old tired policies that have gotten America nowhere fast, then whoever becomes the Republican candidate next year will have had a significant leg-up.

For Obama things are almost at crisis point. Unless he starts to demonstrate the kind of authority he promised as a candidate the voters may well soon turn away from him. There are signs some have stopped listening already, if more follow their lead after tomorrow night's speech then Obama could be a one-term president.