SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:24 P.M. ET:

OBAMA APPROVAL SLIPS – Gallup reports Obama's approval rating has slipped to 44%, the lowest in about a month.  This is consistent with other polls showing that the president still cannot reach the 50% mark, often seen as the minimum for an incumbent chief executive seeking re-election.

HOLD THAT HOLDER – Eric Holder has made a rousing speech to the NAACP convention, denouncing voter ID laws as attempts to suppress minority voting.  The problem here is that, by tradition, several members of the president's Cabinet have generally tried to be above politics, especially in election years – the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, and the attorney general.  It's clear from recent behavior that Holder will break that tradition and get right in the spirit of the campaign.  Not much class.

OBAMA DOES A NIXON – Is Barack channeling Dick?  At times it seems so.  He often uses the same language.  Victor Davis Hanson says that Obama is starting to sound like Nixon did in his final year as president, when the public was tuning him out.  Now Obama seems to be going back even further, announcing that, no matter what the result, this will be his last campaign.  Reminds me of Nixon's declaring in 1962, after losing the race for governor of California, that he was holding his last press conference, and that the press "won't have Nixon to kick around anymore."  Of course, it wasn't true.  He successfully ran for president six years later.  And I don't think it's true with Obama.  He needs the stage, and my gut feeling is that he'll go for UN secretary general. 

THEY STILL REMEMBER – A baseball that Yankee great Lou Gehrig slammed for a homer in the 1928 World Series against the Cards has sold at auction for $62,617.  It's incredible how names like Gehrig and Ruth still bring in the bucks, although they're among the few athletes of a past age who do.  It's also incredible that they called it the "world" series.  A western trip in baseball in 1928 ended in St. Louis.

July 10,  2012