Ed Henry points out the obvious about President Obama's poll numbers which is that once you have to start making decisions on how you're going to govern, there are people who are not going to be happy with those choices. What he glosses over here is the level of obstruction that the Republicans have chosen to use purely as a crass political tactic. Instead of explaining to the viewers the unprecedented use of the filibuster in the Senate, Henry merely says that the White House is "hoping" they can portray them as the party of "no". Maybe if the Ed Henry's of the world did their job and explained our political process to the viewers instead of everything being framed around the horse race and politics, they'd understand why the President has had a hard time getting any of his agenda which would satisfy the left passed.
VELSHI: Ed, you're around the president all the time. I mean this -- his campaign and his election can really be characterized by excitement. What happened to all that excitement surrounding the election of President Obama and why is he not -- either by choice or not -- drumming up that kind of enthusiasm leading up to the midterm elections or is it too early to say?
HENRY: You could probably boil it down to one word. Governing. Governing is just not as much fun, not as easy as it is, as Candy will tell you, as campaigning is. When you're out there, you're a rock star, you're sort of this new brand.
Once Barack Obama was elected president, all those campaign promises -- you know, liberals wanted to cash in on various things that are not so popular in the center of the country.
I think the enthusiasm gap they're hoping here at the White House will be closed once the president gets out there more on the road, once Bill Clinton -- they're planning on deploy him, the former president -- gets out there, they think they can drum up some enthusiasm.
And they're banking on one other thing that Paul will tell you about, as well Candy. That sort of behind the big picture numbers which is that, you noted that people don't trust the president, don't have faith in the president in some of these numbers, but they have even less faith in Congress.
When you dig down deeper, they have the least faith in Republicans in Congress and the White House believe that's because Republicans haven't put up a lot of alternatives to their plans on health care or Wall Street reform.
They're trying to paint the Republicans as the party of the no and basically say you can't get something with nothing and they're hoping here n the White House that over the next three months or so they convince the American people that they've taken some touch choices, the Democrats, some tough votes.
But at least they stood up to try to reform some things, fix this economy, et cetera. We'll see if that works.