DOWNWARD, DOWNWARD - AT 9:36 A.M. ET:  To keep President Obama up at night, just give him the daily Rasmussen reports.  The trend for the president in Ras's daily tracking poll is down and down.  Today, for the second day in a row more respondents - likely voters - disapprove of presidential performance than approve.  The gap again is 51-49, negative.

Even worst for the president is what Rasmussen calls his presidential approval index - the spread between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove.  Today that index sets a new negative record, and stands at -9.  Only 30% strongly approve, but 39% strongly disapprove.

It is extraordinary, this early in a presidency, for 39% of likely voters to strongly disapprove of a president's performance.  Now, again, we stress, as we always do, that a poll is a snapshot in time, has a margin of error, and does not predict conditions a year from today.  But the numbers cannot give Mr. Obama's political advisers a nice day.

The particular danger for Mr. Obama is not disapproval of this policy or that.  Policies can be adjusted.  But I just get the gut feeling - and at this point that's all it is - that a number of voters are starting to have negative personal feelings about the man.  Up to know, it has been Mr. Obama's personal popularity that has sustained him, even as growing numbers doubted his policies.  But his performance at his news conference this week, with constant references to himself and his appalling remarks about an arrest in Cambridge, Massachusetts, brought out some of the worst in Barack Obama, an imperious quality, president as ultimate judge and father of us all.  Some viewers may not have come in way feeling the love they'd felt on the previous date.

The president is in trouble.  But remember that other presidents have been in trouble and have bounced back.  Mr. Obama is a consummate politician.  Those around him brought an unknown African-American politician from obscurity to the White House.  And the press is too often his loyal and devoted servant.

Keep your guard up. The forces of reason, sanity and greatness still have much work to do.

July 25, 2009