The silly season has come early to Washington, it seems. The root cause is a simple fact of American politics these days -- sometimes, there just can't be transparency. That's a fairly provocative statement, so allow me to explain my reasoning in detail. Then, later on (in the talking points section of our program), we'll get into the option of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and how Obama should be using it right about now. But for now, it's time for a sober assessment of where Washington currently stands.

Once again, national politicians are in negotiations over a key piece of legislation which, if it does not pass, will cause doom and gloom across the land. Once again, "journalists" are reduced to mere purveyors of increasingly wild and rampant speculation, for weeks on end. The key underlying fact is ignored by virtually everyone, in the midst of this frenzy: this is not some sort of aberration, this is how Washington gets anything done. At least, these days.

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Due to circumstances beyond our control, there will be no column today. We apologize for the interruption in service. Columns will resume their normal schedule starting tomorrow.

-- Chris Weigant

[Program Note: Last month, we ran this column four days before the end of May, due to travel plans. We promised we'd update the preliminary numbers if they had changed at all due to the last four days' worth of data. As it turned out, we got lucky, and none of the numbers needed adjustment. The final numbers in May were the same as we reported in our preliminary column -- Obama charted a 51.4 percent approval rate, and a 43.1 percent disapproval rate, which left 5.5 percent undecided.]

Bin Laden Bounce Disappears

As many were predicting, President Obama's bounce in approval polls due to the death of Osama Bin Laden did not last very long. While Obama started the month still strongly riding the wave of public approval from the Bin Laden raid, this had mostly dissipated by the second week in June, and Obama's poll numbers flattened out after that. The plateau he hit at this point is slightly higher than he had before the "OBL bump," but that's about the only consolation for Obama fans in the June numbers.

All told, Obama's numbers took a bigger dive in June than he has had to endure for almost two years (since August, 2009). But, when looking back at the data through the lens of history, the past two months will be seen as a polling anomaly, where Obama's numbers shot up, then settled back down, all due to one single event.

Let's take a look at the updated chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

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The mainstream media love to use opinion poll numbers to highlight the American public's disapproval of certain persons and institutions. But there's one poll number they never seem to get around to adequately reporting: their own. There's a reason for this, and it is a simple one. The media doesn't report their own poll numbers because their poll numbers stink, and it's less embarrassing to just ignore this fact rather than to report it.

A wire report today confirmed this, once again. This story focused on new Gallup poll numbers which showed public confidence in newspapers at 28 percent, and in television news at 27 percent. But while the wire report attempted to put these numbers in the brightest possible light, the fact remains that poll numbers this dismal show that roughly three-fourths of the public doesn't have much (if any) confidence in the news media.

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[Program Note: First, a happy Fourth of July to everyone! This article is from last year, as I will be out celebrating our independence today instead of typing. It's a fascinating story which I certainly didn't learn in school, so if anyone's stuck behind a computer monitor today, here's something which will hopefully be entertaining and enlightening for you to read.]

The Revolutionary War lasted a lot longer than most of us realize. Begun in 1775, the war didn't end for six long years, and wasn't fully resolved for another two. During this time, American forces had some notable victories, and also more than a few ignoble defeats at the hands of the British. Some of these battles have been inscribed on the nation's consciousness so deeply they are remembered in name (if not in complete detail) by its citizenry more than two centuries later. For instance, as schoolchildren we all learned the following names: Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill, Fort Ticonderoga, Valley Forge, and Trenton (or "Washington crossing the Delaware"). This litany of sacred spots (which includes Valley Forge even though no battle was fought there, since we all know the name), began with "the shot heard 'round the world," and ended decisively with the surrender of the British General Cornwallis, at Yorktown, Virginia. Yorktown was the endpoint of the war, we all learned as children, and the surrender of the British forces to the ragtag Americans was the decisive victory which forced the British to negotiate an end to the entire conflict. But what we weren't taught is that this battle may not have been such a key one if it hadn't been for a naval battle which had happened over a month earlier. This battle -- called variously the "Battle of the Chesapeake," or the "Battle of the Virginia Capes" -- is one very few Americans have even heard of. This is probably due to the fact that no Americans took part in the battle -- or even witnessed it (except perhaps from afar) -- because it was a slugfest between the British and the French navies. But if the Battle of the Chesapeake hadn't happened, it is very likely General Washington wouldn't have won the Siege of Yorktown, and the American Revolution would have continued on for a lot longer than it did -- and may have been lost, in the end. Which is why it's a shame that almost nobody remembers such a turning point in our country's history.

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An important debate flared this week -- one in which sides were chosen, positions staked out, and invective hurled. I will let that sentence stand in order to illustrate my position on this important issue of the day: Keep the "Oxford" comma!

Ahem. So there.

What else has been going on this week? Well, two faces disappeared from the nation's television screens this week -- Glenn Beck and Mark Halperin. Can't say that I'll miss either one of them, personally. I'm not sure why the world of political commentary richly rewards people who are proven wrong over and over again, but it seems to be a fact of life. Which makes it all the sweeter when they flame out, I guess.

Snarkiness aside, everyone should be celebrating the 45th "birth"day of Medicare today! The best way to do so, of course, is to listen to Ronald Reagan launch his political career by warning Americans about the evils of socialized medicine. You just can't make this stuff up, folks. Here's the whole story, or you can listen to the full ten minutes of the album Reagan cut (for the American Medical Association, in what was ominously dubbed "Operation Coffeecup"), which has the charming Cold-War-era title: Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine. Needless to say, 45 years later, the dark and dismal world Reagan prophesied has not come to pass. Although we did have to live through eight years of the man being president, which was bad enough.

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President Obama, in his press conference yesterday, took Congress to task over the fact that it doesn't work. In fact, he did so in both senses of the phrase "doesn't work." Obama lit into Congress for not doing much in the best of times, and also pointed out the glaring fact that Congress sure does take a lot of vacation time, don't they?

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California has just concluded its first test of a radical concept: if legislators can't manage to do one of the most basic tasks they are hired to do in a timely manner, then cut their pay. No on-time budget? No paycheck. Period. And while there's not enough data to draw any hard-and-fast conclusions, the idea seemed to work exactly as it was designed: this time around, the politicians were very personally motivated to do their job.

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Some poll numbers are starting to come in on President Obama's announced withdrawal plans for American troops in Afghanistan. Overall, the polling shows public support is about as high as could be expected, given the fact that the opposition to Obama's plan is split between "pull more out faster" and "pull the troops out slower."

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Michele Bachmann's political fortunes are visibly on the rise. Mostly due to a well-received debate performance and a single good poll in Iowa, Bachmann is now the newest shining star to emerge on the stage of the Republican presidential nomination contest. Whether she later proves to be a flavor-of-the-week or whether she actually has staying power is still an open question, at this point. But what appears increasingly obvious is that Bachmann's rise is coming at the expense of another Republican woman's draw on the Republican primary electorate: Sarah Palin.

Michele Bachmann's prominence in the chattering classes right now cannot be denied. Measured by television appearances and news stories alone, Bachmann is now leading the pack. Measured by actual polling, Bachmann can now claim to be the number one "I'm not Romney" candidate, at best. National polling on Republican candidates has been sparse and somewhat inconsistent, but the poll that is making all the news this weekend was just released by an Iowa newspaper, and it showed Romney at 23 percent with Bachmann close behind in a "statistical tie" at 22 percent. Herman Cain (the first Republican candidate to get a "debate bounce" this year) scored 10 percent, and all the other candidates didn't even break into double-digit numbers. Iowa, as hardly needs pointing out, is the first-in-the-nation caucus state, and therefore carries more weight than most other places right now. But the interesting thing, to me at least, was that the Iowa poll only listed announced candidates -- meaning Sarah Palin's name wasn't even a choice. The big unanswered question right now is how the two would fare if they both were offered as side-by-side selections in such a poll.

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