Hold your nose and vote for Coakley on Tuesday. The message is already clear to Obama about the need to pivot quickly to debt and spending…. But losing health insurance reform now, and crippling the Obama presidency as the far right wants, would be to throw away the last chance for a decade of any meaningful change.

—Andrew Sullivan, from his blog.

This last sentence is right on target. Recent polls now show a majority of Americans dissatisfied with Obama’s leadership. His approval rating is the lowest for any president at this point in his term since Eisenhower.

This is lunacy—and a terrible sign for the country.

Yes, Obama has made mistakes. But what were our expectations? That after a year of his presidency, the economy would be booming, there’d be another housing bubble, unemployment would be at 5%, a health care bill that made everyone happy, and we’d be gone from Iraq and Afghanistan?

Apparently.

If Americans can not realize that these problems, which took years to make, will require years to solve—less if both political parties were interested in solving them—then we can write off, as Andrew says above, any prospects for progress for years to come.

We already have a lost decade thanks to the Bush years. The United States can’t afford another such dead zone. Our problems are too serious. The challenges this country faces require maturity and patience and gravitas.

So after a year of imperfect solutions and incremental progress, we think Obama’s a bum?

This is not a commentary on Obama, it is a failure of the American public.

Even if you’re not a huge Obama fan, consider the alternatives. The GOP has no leadership, no agenda other than opposition; if seriousness is defined by substance, the Republican party is not a serious political party.

And then there’s this:

His rightwing dissenters may be eccentric and racially exclusive but they have also proved highly effective. They have a populist message that excoriates Bush and the bank bailouts as well as Obama and a TV channel – Fox News – to which they are devoted and which is happy to promote their work. A recent poll showed that if the Tea party – a protest movement set up earlier this year to rally opposition to the stimulus bill and “big government” – were a party it would beat the Republican party.

Who’s the favored candidate of the Tea Party [sic]?

Probably Sarah Palin. That she is considered a credible candidate to run for president in 2012 should scare people—including the people on this blog who are talking up Scott Brown. You may not want to affiliate yourselves with the Tea Party—but if you vote for Brown and the irresponsible lunatic fringe grows stronger, you will.

According to an analysis of New York Times and CBS News polls, Obama has the lowest approval rating among whites at the end of his first year in office than any president in the 30 years that The Times and CBS News have collected such data. And the gap between Obama and the others is significant, ranging from 10 to 36 percentage points.

Furthermore, a Quinnipiac University poll, released on Wednesday, found that most whites think that Obama’s first year as president has been mainly a failure. A plurality of whites even said that Obama has been a worse president than George W. Bush.

Worse than Bush? The mind reels. Can our nation have been Twittified into an amnesiac condition where history has no meaning and events that happened only months ago are forgotten?

And what of Mr. Brown, should he get elected? Those who voted for him will feel good about it for a fleeting moment, like teenagers who smash a mailbox on Halloween. The crunch is satisfying.

And then he will go to Washington and fall into line with the leaders of his band of pedants, and the voters of Massachusetts will (maybe) realize that in their frustration over the complexities of the world they have only made things worse.

This president is not perfect. But he is serious and has already helped this country get back on its feet and regain its standing in the world. He has taken necessary measures—a stimulus—to restore the economy. He has pushed major legislation for one of our country’s most serious problems. He has acted responsibly and credibly on issues of foreign policy.

He deserves our support, and our constructive criticism.

If we reject him—which, let’s be clear, is what Tuesday’s vote is about—we will have only ourselves to blame for the years of gridlock and waste that will inevitably follow, and the United States will continue its slide, launched so forcefully by eight years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, into the ranks of great powers on the decline.