The LBJ Option Must Be Looking Better and Better to Obama

Because his approval numbers are looking worse and worse:

Four in 10 Americans “strongly” disapprove of how President Obama is handling job as president in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll, the highest that number has risen during his time in office and a sign of the hardening opposition to him as he seeks a second term.

While the topline numbers are troubling enough, dig deeper into them and the news gets no better for Obama. Forty-three percent of independents — a group the president spent the better part of the last year courting — strongly disapprove of the job he is doing. Forty seven percent of people 65 years of age and older — reliable voters in any election — strongly disapprove of how he is doing his job.

Strong opposition to Obama has grown markedly since the start of the year.

In a mid-January Post-ABC survey, 28 percent strongly disapproved of the job Obama was doing. That number has steadily ticked upward — with the exception of a poll in early May that followed hard on the killing of Osama bin Laden — as the year has worn on and the economy has remained sluggish (at best).

And even as his strong disapproval numbers have steadily risen, his strong approval numbers have gone into a mirror-image decline.

What is the LBJ option? Deciding not to run for re-election, as LBJ did in early 1968. He could see he was headed for defeat and decided he'd had enough of the job.