“You lie!”—Representative Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) to President Obama during the President’s September 9th health care address to both houses of Congress.

It is emblematic of America’s sadly degraded and unceasingly hateful political discourse that the most memorable line from the President’s health care address came not from his speech, but from a verbal insult flung by an obscure, southern back-bench Republican. Students of history will recall that South Carolina is known for this sort of thing: a congressional predecessor of Wilson’s, Preston Brooks, savagely beat Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in 1856 over differences about slavery and, of course, the opening shots of the American Civil War were fired in that state.

That said, this President has gone from attaining mythic status for his golden communications touch to a guy whose pedantic ‘stay in school, study hard, respect your elders’ return-to-school address ignited a firestorm of both paranoid and cynical accusation that the occasion was underhanded ploy to indoctrinate the nation’s impressionable youth with ‘socialist,’ ‘Marxist’ and/or ‘Muslim’ propaganda…

However ridiculous or outrageous one may find those charges, they garnered considerable press attention. With that as the lead-in to the President’s generally well-received health care speech, students of reputation management will surmise that this is an executive who has lost his ‘untouchable’ status, become an acceptable lightning rod for critics and who may be losing the ability to frame the debate around his image and policies. In fact, there are many who argue that the President’s demeanor over the summer has, contrary to its intended effect, invited scorn and disrespect from both supporters and opponents.

A couple of recent quotes from progressive blogs historically supportive of the President set the negative tone. First from John Aravosis at Americablog:

“Said deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton, ‘He’s going to come back as rip-roaring as he was before.’

Yes, the reason that President Obama is now starting to be perceived as a weak leader by the right, independents, and the left in all the polls is because he simply hasn’t caved enough on his core principles. If only he’d given the Republicans 50% of the stimulus package as tax cuts, instead of 40%, maybe then Americans would believe him to be a true leader.

PS—As rip-roaring as before? The previous ‘rip-roaring’ lost Obama 20 points in the polls, reinvigorated a nearly-dead GOP, fractured a once unified Democratic party, and lost control of your signature issue. It’s not clear that Democrats can afford much more of the White House’s definition of successful leadership.”