A Reuters/Ipsos poll Wednesday found that 73 percent of Americans believe the country is off on the wrong track.

"Obama started going wrong from the get-go. Far from offering the economic boost that was promised, the stimulus was instead the single largest payoff to the Democratic clientele in political history. Liberals are telling us now that it was not large enough – but conservatives have been saying for two-and-a-half years that pork for Democratic loyalists is a lousy way to jump-start the economy, no matter how expensive it is. Then, Obama followed that up not with a “laser-beam” focus on jobs – but rather cap and trade and Obamacare. These two items dominated the legislative agenda through the rest of 2009 and the first part of 2010. They were not priorities of the public, but rather of the party elite, whose attitude was: We have this enormous majority, so we’d better do something with it."

"It is hard to imagine public optimism being more negative about the economy than it is right now. ... In terms of pubic opinion he has got a huge hill to climb" -- Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute think tank.

"The debt ceiling fiasco and the downgrade, punctuated by ... stock market gyrations, has made something in me snap. "It's the sound of confidence in Obama's leadership breaking" -- Matt Miller, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

"The president has failed up until now to produce a coherent explanation about where we are and what we need to do that Americans can understand" -- William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank.

"As he confronts the threat of another recession and turmoil in the financial markets, President Obama is being advised by an economic team that is noticeably short on big-name players — potentially hurting his ability to find solutions and sell them to Wall Street, Congress and the American public.

“When you ask about the economic team, it’s kind of like, ‘What economic team?’” said Edward Mills, a financial policy analyst with FBR Capital Markets. “They are very thin at a very critical time.”

Perhaps more telling, there no longer is a formal economic briefing in the Oval Office every morning, a gathering in which Summers, Romer, Geithner and other key advisors assessed the data and batted around ideas with Obama." -- LA Times