President Obama during today's brief presser with British PM Gordon Brown:

What I'm looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market, but the long-term ability for the United States and the entire world economy to regain its footing. And, you know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. You know, it bobs up and down day to day. And if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong.

Sometimes it seems like our new president is just a little self-absorbed. I'm pretty sure that most Americans don't view the day to day fluctuations in the stock market, fluctuations that have wiped out half or more of their life savings, as anything like a tracking poll. And these numbers don't bob up and down. Since Obama's been in office they've bobbed only in one direction. The Dow has lost nearly 1,500 points in just over a month. If Obama's poll numbers had taken a dive like this during the campaign, nobody in Chicago would have been worried about the long-term strategy -- they would have been worried about finding new jobs.