Obama: People Still Like Him.

Is the Obama brand tarnished? Not so, sayeth Ben Smith:

With Barack Obama’s victory in passing a massive stimulus package marred by days of bad press — as not a single House Republican backed the bill, his health czar went down in flames and his second pick for commerce secretary walked away — the administration has been cut down to size, and lost some of its bipartisan sheen.

Such, at least, has been the beltway chatter, but so far the numbers don’t back it up.

Obama’s approval rating remains well above 60 percent in tracking polls. A range of state pollsters said they’d seen no diminution in the president’s sky-high approval ratings, and no improvement in congressional Republicans’ dismal numbers.

Nothing surprising here. Obama has been president for less than a month; Americans are reserving judgement until they have something to judge. But if the economy is still in the tank a year from now, the numbers may be a bit different. Fair or not, the current President is always blamed when the money trees refuse to bear their succulent fruit.

But even if Obama can't resuscitate the GDP, we'll always have a larger national debt to look forward to. It's so beautiful, floating out there in space, cloaked in a shroud of incomprehensible majesty. I'm pretty sure it's already being worshipped by some celebrity-saturated cult in L.A.