The late, longtime New Yorker critic Pauline Kael was said to have expressed confusion over Richard Nixon’s landslide reelection in 1972 — because no one she knew had actually voted for him. To borrow that notion, conservatives today imagine that everyone views the current occupant of the White House as they do: Barack Obama is the worst president ever. Conventional wisdom posits that such a potent right-wing, anti-Obama sentiment will diminish the President’s power — enough for Republicans to vanquish Democrats in November, regain control of Congress, and weaken the incumbent for 2012.
But this myopia has been created within an electronic cocoon of Fox News, talk radio, conservative websites, and prominent rhetoric from Republican leaders, all passionately reinforcing the message that the Obama Administration is disastrous on an historic scale….