Americans told President Obama in 2012, "If you like your popularity, you can keep it."
We lied.
Well, at least we didn't tell him the whole truth. What we meant to say was that Obama could keep the support of a majority of Americans unless he broke our trust. Throughout his first term, even as his job-approval rating cycled up and down, one thing remained constant: Polls showed that most Americans trusted Obama.
As they say in Washington, that is no longer operable.
A new Quinnipiac University poll shows for the first time that a majority of Americans (52 percent) don't think the president is honest and trustworthy. His previous lowest mark came on May 30, when 47 percent said he couldn't be trusted. In a related finding, only 39 percent of the public approves of Obama's job performance.
This follows recent polls by Gallup and NBC News/Wall Street Journal showing Obama's approval ratings at the lowest levels of his presidency. Obama's second term is on the same downward trajectory as President George W. Bush's.
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Like his predecessor, Obama seems to be taking his credibility for granted. The Benghazi attack, the seizure of telephone records from the Associated Press, the IRS's investigations of political groups, the National Security Agency's massive domestic-spying operation, the "red line" in Syria, and now Obamacare—the White House responded to every controversy or quasi-scandal with changing explanations, distortion, or outright deception.
Predictably, the public is starting to doubt the word of the president and his team