A new Barna Survey reveals shows that 48 percent of those surveyed rated President Obama’s honesty as “excellent” or “good” on a five-point scale. Nearly 70 percent gave the same ratings to Obama on the intelligence factor. The most shocking number is that 45 percent found Obama’s philosophy of government to be excellent or good.

Among Protestants, Obama received the best scores on honesty, intelligence and philosophy of government. Rick Perry was close behind on all three characteristics. The two had nearly identical scores on leadership ability.

I don’t get it. How can these numbers be as high as they are given the fact that unemployment is in the 9 percent range, the economy is stalled, spending is out of control with calls for more spending, we’ve been involved in toppling two foreign governments, and there are calls for higher taxes on the most productive members of society?

What do we make of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll that says “Four in 10 Americans ‘strongly’ disapprove of how President Obama is handling the job of president in the, the highest that number has risen during his time in office and a sign of the hardening opposition to him as he seeks a second term”? Something’s not right.

If the President Obama is so smart, then why doesn’t he understand that you don’t fix an economy by raising taxes and adding more regulations on businesses? Then there’s the teleprompter thing. Do you remember how the media poked fun of Ronald Reagan because he used note cards? Obama can’t give an address without the use of a teleprompter.

Sure, Obama may be book smart, but that doesn’t mean he’s economic smart. His ideology has gotten in the way of the facts of history and the fundamentals of economics, and his accomplices in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the media are covering for him.

The honesty results are equally puzzling. President Obama continues to blame everybody and everything for the failing economy except his own policies. Three years of blaming George Bush are enough, so now the down-turn in the economy is being blamed on the weather, the tea party, millionaires and billionaires, the Japanese earthquake, and the American people for being “soft.” We’ve seen this before:

In 1979, as the U.S. was reeling from skyrocketing interest rates, high unemployment and an energy crisis, President Jimmy Carter delivered a televised address that would later infamously be labeled, “the malaise speech.” He never used the word, but rather blamed the poor economy in part on a “crisis of the American spirit.”

Unlike Carter, whose popularity plummeted in the final two years of his presidency, Obama’s is still high.

I don’t get it. Maybe Obama is right, Americans have gotten soft . . . soft in the head.