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US President Barack Obama grimaces during a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on December 7, 2009. Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

US President Barack Obama grimaces during a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington on December 7, 2009.

Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

Get used to the headline 'Obama Approval Hits New Low'.

At this point, polls showing Obama's approval at roughly 50–50 barely constitute news, but Gallup has Obama's approval at 47 percent, a new low, and disapproval at 46, a new high.

As recently as mid-November, Obama was at 53 percent approval and 38 percent disapproval.

You'll hear a million and one theories for what's driving the slump in Obama's numbers: the Afghanistan war decision, lack of progress on health care, frustration with a sense of runaway public spending and a government that's out of touch. I think Obama's got bad news at a bad time.

It's December, and the holiday season. It's a time when folks think about getting Christmas and Hanukkah gifts for their friends and family, and they're finding that financial situations are forcing them to skimp a bit, or in some cases, a lot. They want Santa to leave a lot under the tree. It's also coming up on the end of the year, and usually a time of reflecting upon the year gone by. A lot of folks, in January, thought that Obama's inauguration meant better days were ahead. Not yet, they aren't.

If an unemployment rate between 4 and 6 percent is "normal," as it was during much of the past decade, it looks like we're going to take a long time to get back to it, more than one year. The signs of economic pain are still everywhere one looks in a lot of communities — foreclosure signs in front of houses, empty storefronts, construction projects on hold. Food and gas prices seem up a bit, exacerbating the squeeze.

Americans elected Obama for results; they didn't elect him so they could spend a year hearing him go on and on about all the problems he inherited.