Barack Obama had a pretty bad month inside the Beltway, with Republicans on the warpath over multiple scandals. Outside Washington, Obama didn't have too bad a month at all, as his job approval ratings barely budged.

President Obama lost almost all the ground he had gained late in the 2012 election season. He hit a new low in approval and a new high in disapproval for his second term, as the honeymoon bounce completely evaporated.

As expected, Obama's "second honeymoon" in the polls is starting to fade. The election is long over, the inauguration is fading from memory, and now the real legislative struggles of Obama's second term have begun.

Obama's "second honeymoon" period with the public may not last more than a few months, but for now seems to be holding steady. He's in a pretty good position right now in terms of "political capital," but this will likely change as legislative reality sets in.

Obama is currently enjoying not only a vacation with his family in Hawai'i, but also a "second honeymoon" with the public at large. If history is any guide, the fiscal cliff deal could create another wave of approval on top of the "second honeymoon."

While the overall trend is indeed extremely positive for Obama at this point, he's still got a long way to go to retain his job this fall.

This month Obama poll watchers got some good news, and some bad news. This was capped off by the Washington punditocracy making a stupid comparison between polling for Obama and Carter.

For August, Obama averaged 43.8 percent job approval and 50.7 percent disapproval. Among other records he set this month, this is the widest "underwater" gap he's ever posted, with a spread of 6.9 percent.

[Program Note: Last month, we ran this column four days before the end of May, due to travel plans. We promised we'd update the preliminary numbers i...

"What a difference a death makes." President Obama announced at the very beginning of the month that Osama bin Laden was dead, and his poll numbers reacted almost immediately.

April was a pretty miserable month for Barack Obama, mostly due to the high price of gasoline at the pump. But May is already shaping up to be one of Obama's best months ever, for one very obvious reason.

While catastrophic world events dominated the news for most of the month, Obama's approval rating was being hit with a creeping domestic problem -- the rising price of gasoline.

In terms of shifts in public opinion, January and February were the best two months President Obama has yet had during his entire presidency.

When taken month-to-month, January, 2011, was Obama's best month of his entire presidency. Not only did he finally get his bump -- but it was a truly significant bump.

Obama once again charted an unbelievably stable month in terms of approval ratings. The mildly good news was in his disapproval rating, which dropped significantly over the course of December.

Obama just had his most stable month ever in the public opinion polls, capping off a remarkable year of polling stability. Were you to just read the headlines or listen to the soundbites, you may have a different impression.

Obama's approval rating ended the month on somewhat of an upswing, at 46.1 percent.Obama's approval rating stayed remarkably steady all month long.

Last month I rashly wrote that since Obama was starting the month on an upswing, he had a good chance of posting largish gains in September. This didn't happen.

Augusts haven't been very kind to Obama. Two years ago, August was "Reverend Wright" month. Last year, August was "death panel" month. By that measure, at least, this past August wasn't actually all that bad.

July had some political successes for Obama, but the public once again didn't give him any credit for passing Wall Street reform, or any of the other achievements Obama chalked up.

Obama seems to have hit a plateau in his approval ratings, which have remained largely unchanged for the past three months. Could it be that we've all just made up our minds about the job the president is doing?

Will Obama's presidency wind up charting a similar course as Carter, or will he recover as Reagan did? Only a fool would even contemplate making such a prediction at this point, that's all that really can be said.

Everyone was looking for a healthy bounce in Obama's poll numbers after health reform passed. This bounce has either failed to materialize yet, or is so gradual it likely won't end up being called a "bounce."

The president's approval and disapproval numbers are within kissing distance. When will Obama turn this around? Will he turn this around?

After taking a look at Obama's numbers for the month, we continue our march backwards through history, this month serving up a comparison between Obama and Richard Nixon's term-and-a-half.