APPROVAL RATING: 60%

APPROVAL INDEX: +10 (36% S/A, 26% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: While his overall approval rating remains constant, Obama's approval index takes a nine-point plummet in four days, down 18 points since inauguration day.

EVENT: $787 billion (more likely a trillion) "stimulus" bill signed into law, with virtually no debate.

OBAMA QUOTE: "If we don't act immediately, then millions more jobs will disappear; the national unemployment rates will approach double digits; more people will lose their homes and their health care. And our nation will sink into a crisis that at some point is going to be that much tougher to reverse."

— 2/10/09, at a Florida town hall.

APPROVAL RATING: 56%

APPROVAL INDEX: +3 (34% S/A, 31% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: In four days, Obama's approval rating drops three points, with his approval index losing another eight points during this same time.

EVENT: Obama's apology tour hits Europe, where he spends his whole trip talking about how he's not George W. Bush.

OBAMA QUOTE: "Instead of celebrating your [Europe's, France's] dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." — 4/03/09.

EXTRA NUGGET: "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as

I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." — 4/04/09, Obama while speaking to a foreign reporter in France.

APPROVAL RATING: 54%

APPROVAL INDEX: +2 (34% S/A, 32% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: Both the approval rating and index reach their lowest points to date, with the index taking a five-point drop in three days.

EVENT: Post Tea Party momentum.

OBAMA QUOTE: "[A]s we move forward dealing with this extraordinary economic crisis, we also have a deficit [and] a confidence gap when it comes to the American people. And we've got to earn their trust. They've got to feel confident that their dollars are being spent wisely." — 4/20/09, at a Cabinet meeting, announcing a bureaucratic savings goal of $100 million.

EXTRA NUGGET: "We are out of money."

— 5/23/09. Obama during a C-SPAN interview.

APPROVAL RATING: 54%

APPROVAL INDEX: 0 (34% S/A, 34% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: For the first time, the number of Americans who "strongly approve" and "strongly disapprove" of Obama's policy is equal, meaning an approval index of zero.

EVENT: Government Motors. Obama takes over the nation's auto industry… along with the unions.

OBAMA QUOTE: "What we are not doing — what I have no interest in doing — is running GM." — 6/01/09, at a press conference.

EXTRA NUGGET: "[I] was directly threatened by the White House, and, in essence, compelled to withdraw [my clients'] opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy [our] reputation if [we] continued to fight." — 5/01/09, attorney Thomas Lauria, to WJR-AM in Detroit, who represented private Chrysler investors who opposed Obama's takeover plan.

APPROVAL RATING: 53%

APPROVAL INDEX: - 2 (32% S/A, 34% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: Obama's approval index crosses into negative territory for the first time, while his overall approval rating rests at an all-time low as well.

EVENT: Run-up to the job-killing, de facto-massive-tax cap and trade fiasco that eventually passes in the House on 6/26/09.

OBAMA QUOTE: "I know this is going to be a close vote, in part because of the misinformation that's out there that suggests there's somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and our economic growth. But my call to those members of Congress who are still on the fence, as well as to the American people, is this: We cannot be afraid of the future." — 6/25/09, White House statement.

EXTRA NUGGET: Flashback! "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." — January 2008, then candidate Obama speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle.

APPROVAL RATING: 51%

APPROVAL INDEX: -8 (30% S/A, 38% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: The approval rating and index both reach all-time lows simultaneously: 51% and -8% respectively. It's worth noting that the index takes a six-point drop in three days.

EVENT: Obamacare: It becomes clear by this point that the president wants to ram an awful bill through Congress before the August recess. (The gory details of Pelosi's HR 3200 are officially released on 7/14/09.) Also, the stimulus proves to be a bust: unemployment reaches 9.5% around this time, or higher than what Obama promised we might face had we not passed his stimulus.

OBAMA QUOTE: "Now, I know one of the biggest questions on everybody's mind is how do we pay for all this, how do we finance reform? And I have made a commitment, because our deficit is a genuine problem, that whatever we do we have to pay for it. This can't add to our deficits." — 7/01/09, Obama during an online town hall on health care.

APPROVAL RATING: 49%

APPROVAL INDEX: -8 (30% S/A, 38% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: Obama's approval rating slips below 50% for the first time. More Americans now give his administration the thumbs-down instead of the thumbs-up.

EVENT: Gates-Gate. When, after admitting he didn't have all the facts of the case during a prime-time news conference, Obama said the police "acted stupidly" in arresting his friend Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates.

OBAMA QUOTE: "I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact." — 7/22/09, prime time press conference.

APPROVAL RATING: 49%

APPROVAL INDEX: -9 (30% S/A, 39% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: The approval index takes another quick, noticeable drop: Five points in three days. Obama's overall approval rating still rests below 50%.

EVENT: Town halls heat up as Americans learn more details about Obamacare. Obama's economically illiterate pitches are also revealed as lies, as past instances of him advocating a single-payer system pop up on YouTube.

OBAMA QUOTE: "People say, well, how can a private company compete against the government?... If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the Post Office that's always having problems!" — 8/11/09, in New Hampshire at a (stacked) town hall.

EXTRA NUGGET: Flashback! "I happen to be a proponent of single-payer, universal health care plan."

— 2003, Sen. Obama to the AFL-CIO.

APPROVAL RATING: 45%

APPROVAL INDEX: -11 (30% S/A, 41% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: The approval rating reaches an all-time low, with the approval index now in negative double digits.

EVENT: The Van "9/11 Truther-Marxist" Jones scandal; more broadly, attention on Obama's unaccountable, radical, barely vetted czars heats up to record temperatures.

APPROVAL RATING: 48%

APPROVAL INDEX: -10 (30% S/A, 40% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: One of the fastest drops in the approval index: Five points in just three days.

EVENT: After Obama's naïve UN appearance (and the Mahmoud-Moammar show at Turtle Bay), it's revealed that Iran has been hiding a secret nuclear site after all. The president is largely seen as oblivious to the world's evils.

OBAMA QUOTE: "We remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran to address the nuclear issue[.]" — 9/25/09, statement at the G20 meeting about our new knowledge of Iran's nuclear deceptions.

APPROVAL RATING: 47%

APPROVAL INDEX: -11 (28% S/A, 39% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: A big drop on both fronts: The approval index loses eight points in six days, while Obama's overall approval rating, after climbing back

up to 50% on Oct. 10, drops another three points.

EVENT: A culmination of events: Obama's Nobel Peace

Prize draws attention to how much he hasn't accomplished. It's also revealed that we've lost a net 3.6 million jobs. But the main reason for the drop is likely Obamacare's escape from committee (with the help of Republican Olympia Snowe), which brings us one giant step closer to socialism.

OBAMA QUOTE: "I want to particularly thank Sen. Olympia Snowe for both the political courage and the seriousness of purpose that she's demonstrated throughout this process… As a result of these efforts, we are now closer than ever before to passing health reform. But we're not there yet. Now is not the time to pat ourselves on the back." — 10/13/09, Rose Garden statement.

APPROVAL RATING: 47%

APPROVAL INDEX: -13 (26% S/A, 39% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: Obama's approval index and overall approval rating, while not at all-time lows, reach the

lowest they've been in over a month. It's also worth noting that the number of Americas who "strongly approve" of Obama reaches an all-time low on this date: just 26%.

EVENT: War on Fox News/media isolation operations: Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Mao-quoting Communications Director Anita Dunn, and eventually Obama himself all trash Fox on a media blitzkrieg this week. A crescendo is reached on this day when the White House tries to ban Fox from participating in an interview with "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg, a move that shocks even the "mainstream media."

OBAMA QUOTE: "If [media] is operating basically as a talk-radio format, then that's one thing, and if it's operating as a news outlet, then that's another. But it's not something I'm losing a lot of sleep over." — 10/22/09, on NBC News.

EXTRA NUGGET: "[Fox is] really not news. It's pushing a point of view and the bigger thing is that other news organizations, like yours, ought not to treat them that way and we're not going to treat them that way."

— 10/18/09, Chief Obama adviser David Axelrod, telling the media how to behave, to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News' "This Week."

APPROVAL RATING: 45%

APPROVAL INDEX: -15% (27% S/A, 42% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: Obama's approval index and overall approval rating reach an all time low.

EVENT: On the eve of Obama's speech regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan, speculation grows over whether he will deploy additional troops to the region.

APPROVAL RATING: 44%

APPROVAL INDEX: -21 (25% S/A, 46% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: Even though the overall approval rating rebounded a bit from November, the number of people who "strongly approve" is at an all time low.

EVENT: The Ben Nelson-buyoff, or the middle-of-the-night cloture vote on health care that passes the Senate against the wishes of the American people, bringing us one step closer to government-run health care.

OBAMA QUOTE: "These are big reforms. If passed, this will be the most important piece of social policy since the Social Security Act in the 1930s."

— 12/24/09, State Dining Room remark.

APPROVAL RATING: 46%

APPROVAL INDEX: -17 (26% S/A, 43% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: The approval index drops a hefty 7 points in three days.

EVENT: Transparency, or lack thereof, regarding the health care debate. Candidate Obama promised a whopping eight times during the campaign to televise (and stream) any and all health care negotiations on C-SPAN, only to blatantly break the promise less than a year after being sworn in. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even happily admitted her troops will be hashing out the plan "...behind closed doors according to an agreement by top Democrats."

OBAMA QUOTE: "But they [the Clintons] made one really big mistake [regarding healthcare], and that is they took all their people and all their experts into a room and then they closed the door… We will work on, uh, this process, publically. It'll be on C-SPAN. It'll be streaming over the net." — 11/18/09, Obama, Google Q and A.

APPROVAL RATING: 44%

APPROVAL INDEX: -19 (24% S/A, 43% S/D)

POLLING SUMMARY: Obama matches his lowest overall approval rating to date (44%), and the approval index drops 8 points in four days.

EVENT: In short, Obama fatigue. As the president celebrates his one-year anniversary in office, attention is brought to how little he's accomplished—and how much of his agenda isn't transparent. To wit: Even the drooling Euro paper Der Spiegel writes: "The end of the Obama revolution — The euphoria is gone, the friendly fire has started: Barack Obama is suddenly looking less like a superstar and more like just another candidate." Furthermore, Republican Scott Brown's win in Massachusetts highlights just how unpopular this president is, even in the bluest of blue states.

OBAMA QUOTE: "The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they're frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."