He’s positioned exactly where he should be, his critique of Obama is substantively and tonally perfect. If I were on Team Obama this stump speech would scare the crap out of me.

Perry should be the consensus favorite to win the nomination in a couple weeks.

If you want another example of how foolish Team Obama is by trying to hobble Mitt Romney, John McCormack has a breakdown of how two Republican politicians handle the idea of corporate taxation while talking to voters. In the first, we get Romney telling a voter “Corporations are people, my friend.” (“My friend” is the cherry on top.) Then McCormack shows how Ryan handled an almost identical question.

You tell me: Does Romney look like a stud politician?

The left has spent a lot of time spinning its wheels the last two weeks arguing about why Obama’s presidency is such a failure. The dominant arguments seem to be: (1) He’s not liberal enough; (2) He’s liberal enough, but he’s not a dirty enough fighter; (3) His failings are temperamental–he doesn’t emote, connect, use the bully pulpit, etc.

All three of these arguments are the standard-issue failure rationalizations of politics. They’re basically what conservatives and Republicans said in 1992 and 1996, what liberals and Democrats said in 2004, and, most recently, what conservatives and Republicans said in 2008. The key difference is that in the Republican version of this argument, there’s usually a bitter debate between factions arguing that the candidate would have won if only he’d been more conservative or less conservative–depending on the viewpoint of the pundit making the argument. I haven’t seen any Dems arguing that Obama’s problem is that he’s been too liberal. Otherwise, both sides think they only loose because they’re too pure and the other guys are too mean. And for whatever reason, people love arm-chair psychologizing presidents, as if demeanor trumps policy completely. None of these rationalizations for Obama’s failures are particularly illuminating.

But a couple things strike me.

First, it’s odd that Democrats suddenly find the debt ceiling fight to be the sine qua non of liberal principles. Because when you jump up to 30,000 feet, Obama’s liberal accomplishments have been pretty impressive:

* He passed a giant healthcare law, giving the left much–though by no means all–of what it wanted. He did this in the face of bipartisan opposition; spent enormous political capital on it; and has suffered very steep political consequences as a result. It’s hard to square his bruising, year-long campaign for Obamacare with the contention that Obama compromises too much and doesn’t like to fight.

* He presided over the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. He didn’t push the button himself, but he made sure it happened.

* He has generally expanded the role of government.

As a top-line list of accomplishments, that’s not bad. But it doesn’t include the Big One: Obama has laid the groundwork to end both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, regardless of the consequences. Once upon a time, these wars were the single most important thing in Democratic politics.

Yes, I understand that from the Democratic perspective, Obama hasn’t ended them fast enough. Yes, he continued the presence in Iraq longer than they would have liked. But realistically speaking, of the three people who could have become president in 2008–Obama, Clinton, or McCain–Obama is the only one who would have gotten us to the point we’re at now in those two conflicts. He hasn’t been as liberal as many Democrats would like, but he has been much, much more dovish than Clinton or McCain would have been. It seems like that should count for quite a lot.

(And I understand that liberals could make a list of complaints about action items Obama didn’t deliver on–warrantless wiretaps, the Bush tax cuts, Gitmo, etc. I’m simply making the case that they ought to be, if not ecstatic, then quietly pleased with what they’ve gotten from him.)

So what good rationalizations are there to be made for Obama? (That is, if you discount the conservative critique, which I assume most liberals do.) I think there are two, though I haven’t seen any liberals making them.

(1) Obama is a hostage to events. By any measure, the last 36 months have been brutal for the entire world. Obama’s the president, not King of the Markets, and the U.S. is suffering not just from entitlement bloat, but from a financial crisis and a housing collapse, the latter of which could take decades to work out. On top of that, Europe is a complete disaster and even in the best of times, would be a drag on the world economy. On top of that, China has its own housing problems, not to mention looming demographic catastrophe. No president, pursuing any other set of policies, could have reasonably expected much better results than we’re seeing now.

(2) Obama is not a very good president. For whatever reason–strategic foolishness, political naivete, or maybe he’s just not that bright–Obama simply isn’t very good at the job. He loses control of issues by handing process off to Congress (Obamacare); he miscalculates political advantage (not passing his own debt ceiling increase because he wanted to hang this one on the Republicans); he just doesn’t have the skills/instincts/intelligence/take your pick to perform the job ably.

If I were a Democratic partisan, I’d be making the case for (1) now, and then for (2) after he loses the election. They’re both more helpful to the movement than the standard trio of rationalizations.

One final note: Jonathan Chait makes a case for something like (1) in this piece, where he argues that Obama still has a perfectly clear path to victory in 2012. I agree, to some extent. A sitting president always has a puncher’s chance. And Obama will have to run an insurgent campaign, as Chait suggests. (Though the fact that Team Obama spent part of this week trying to torpedo Mitt Romney tells you something about how smart they aren’t. Forget the current polling: Romney is the most beatable Republican in the field. He’s terrible at retail politics, has a glass jaw, and would not be able to take advantage of the two big issues–Obamacare and jobs–because of his “accomplishments” as governor and job-killer at Bain Capital. Team Obama should be doing anything they can to help Romney get the nomination. The fact that they misunderstand the nature of their Republican challengers ought to be really unsettling to down-ticket Dems.)

What I would caution Chait from doing, however, is putting too much stock in Obama’s base approval numbers. As a statistical matter, they’re skewed by the enormous disparity between black approval and everyone else. Which means that even if black voters turn out like everyone else (not often the case) in swing-states where blacks make up less than the national average (WI, IN, for starters) he’ll be at a much greater disadvantage than his approval numbers show.

(Also, this assumes there’s not Bradley Effect in approval surveys. I’m not sure I’d believe that.)

If you were setting the Vegas line on the date Rick Perry takes over the lead from Mitt Romney in the RealClear Politics poll average, where would you put the over/under?

I’d probably stick it at September 14.

Exit Question: If you were establishing the line on the date Hugh Hewitt jumps ship from Romney to Perry, where would you set that?

Galley Friend P.G. found this one:

 Billy’s Beer and Wine sold exactly $47 worth of lottery tickets the day before Marjorie Selbee arrived, just another sleepy day for the liquor store in this tiny Western Massachusetts town. But from the moment the 70-something woman from Michigan entered the store early July 12, Billy’s wasn’t sleepy anymore.

 But the Selbees, who run a gambling company called GS Investment Strategies, know a secret about the Massachusetts State Lottery: For a few days about every three months, Cash WinFall may be the most reliably lucrative lottery game in the country. Because of a quirk in the rules, when the jackpot reaches roughly $2 million and no one wins, payoffs for smaller prizes swell dramatically, which statisticians say practically assures a profit to anyone who buys at least $100,000 worth of tickets. . . .

Michael Barone on the Iowa Straw Poll of 1979:

Iowa Republicans got into the act later. In 1979, they took a straw poll at a political fundraiser. The surprise winner was George Bush, former Texas congressman and CIA director, who came in slightly ahead of Ronald Reagan. Candidates considered moderate — Bush, Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker, Illinois Rep. John Anderson — won most of the votes.

This straw poll proved to be an accurate predictor of the precinct caucuses in winter 1980. Bush again came in first, ahead of Ronald Reagan. I remember walking with him the morning after in the Des Moines snow, as he claimed he had “Big Mo” — momentum.

It wasn’t enough to carry him to victory in the New Hampshire primary or give him the presidential nomination. But without this victory in Iowa, it’s inconceivable that the George Bushes, father and son, would have been president or vice president for 20 of the next 28 years.

Jon Huntsman’s recently-released website points to a bunch of problems with both his campaign and the idea of having an interactive website for any political campaign.

First, take a look at this particular post: Huntsman is pimping an endorsement from Jeb Bush!

. . . Jr.

Isn’t it a little early to be rolling out meaningless endorsements? Isn’t it especially too early to be rolling out endorsements that are designed to be semi-misleading? Jon Huntsman–now with real chocolatey taste and genuine Corinthian Leather!

Now let’s move on to the overall look of the site. Check out the Big Red H up top. On the pale blue background that could be waves gently lapping on a beach in a videogame.

Remind you of the aesthetic of any other political campaign you’ve seen before? I can’t quite place it . . . maybe . . . oh, this one?

If you’re Jon Huntsman and one of your four biggest electoral problems is that primary voters might identify you too closely with Obama, maybe you could wait to unveil the Obama-inspired graphic design elements until after you’ve won the primaries? Or maybe, not at all? Because if anything, the Huntsman “H” is even worse, suggesting as it does that the candidate walks on water. America just elected a god-president. It hasn’t worked out so hot.

Finally, go check out the comments section of the Huntsman item. A fair number of them are anti-Huntsman comments. I’m all for transparency, I suppose, but probably not on the website being paid for by the campaign. The problem isn’t that the website is paying to give a platform to anti-Huntsman trolls–they’re paying to give a platform to actual critiques of the candidate. (Some of the comments are much less flame-like than you’d assume.)

So what’s a campaign website to do? Well, you can curate your comments and turn into a pravda-ish world where thousands of people comment and none of them are ever, in the least bit, negative. (Like some conservative personalities do.) Or you can pay for a platform for people to criticize you. Or–and this might be way, waaayyyyyy out there–you could not have comments on a website run by a political campaign.

Oh I know. You have to have engagement! Social Media! Web 2.0! This is the New World we live in. I suppose.

But if someone on the Huntsman team could explain to me exactly what the added value of the 43 comments on that post are–how many votes they are going to translate to; how many donations–I’d be all ears.

I suspect that like the great majority of interactive value adds in the business world, the actual upside of this for Huntsman is vanishingly small, while the downside–placing negative reader feedback side-by-side with campaign propaganda–is pretty obvious.

Galley Friend Ben Domenech has started a little daily e-newsletter. It’s called the Transom and I can’t recommend it highly enough. (You can sign up for it here.) It’s like an old-school version of James Taranto’s Best of the Web, though (and this isn’t a knock on Taranto, who’s great) with a slightly broader cast. As a for instance, today’s Transom both catches you up on the Wisconsin recall and points to this sensational FT Magazine piece on the theft of the Mona Lisa.

This is one of the few things on the internet that’s absolutely worth your valuable time.