“[I]f you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.” That is what Barack Obama said when he accepted his party’s presidential nomination in 2008. Four years later, it reads like a prophetic description of his re-election campaign.

President Obama’s two biggest legislative accomplishments were the passage of his $831 billion economic stimulus package and his $1.8 trillion health care law. How’s that working out? Last month’s Washington Post-ABC News poll found that a mere 31 percent of Americans believe his “economic program” made things better, compared with 67 percent who said it had “no real effect” or even made conditions worse.