The shine is off. Recent tracking polls have shown the president’s popularity trending downwards under 50%. And both Public Policy Polling and Rasmussen show President Obama in tight races with Republican front-runners, and even with some non-Republican front-runners.

The most striking notes: Sarah Palin, the woman who many allege absolutely could not beat Obama, comes within three points in the Rasmussen poll and eight in the Public Policy Polling poll. And even more surprising, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) comes within eight points on Public Policy Polling.

Yes, the 75-year-old Texas congressman is nearly as close to Obama as John McCain was in 2008. This suggests a growing number of Americans, as of this moment, would vote for anyone over Barack Obama.

A year ago, it was very different for Obama, who couldn’t wait to actually get sworn in before giving regular addresses to the nation. Obama was a great campaigner, a well-polished speaker, and a youth celebrity figure who inspired a best-selling song that became a YouTube sensation (and one of Obama’s favorite songs). A year later, if Rasmussen is to be believed, the Democrats are on the verge of a political cataclysm, with the GOP having built a 7-point lead on the generic ballot.

Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan) is expressing his frustration, saying he’s tired of “covering Obama’s can,” and has some pointed advice: “The president could take a few pages from Lyndon Johnson’s book … and start knocking heads together.”

Conyers is wrong — the president can’t. During his four years in the U.S. Senate (which he spent running for president), Obama didn’t acquire the legislative “skills” Lyndon Johnson did during ten years as a member of the Senate leadership. If the Democrats had wanted someone who would be effective moving legislation, they picked the wrong guy. They picked a solid candidate who could excite crowds and raise money. They didn’t choose someone who could make good decisions and move bills.

What’s the lesson for Republicans in 2012? Simply put, the goal of the nominating process is not to pick a good candidate; it’s to pick a good president. The problem with political folks is we tend to imagine the presidential campaign as the Super Bowl of politics, when it isn’t even opening day.

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I wrote a column on 2012 myths and misconceptions back in June discussing conventional wisdom that doesn’t necessarily match up with reality. However, we just scratched the surface of the political myth-making business. Several more common memes deserve to be busted.

Myth: 2012 primary polls are legitimate news.

Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney have all led trial heats for the 2012 race for the GOP nomination that have been taken in 2009. None has topped 30 percent in any poll, and, generally, all three are within six points of each other. So what does this all mean?

Nothing. Perhaps even less than nothing.

Since I write about 2012 frequently, taking on this myth is akin to a pro-wrestler admitting that pro-wrestling is fixed. However, national 2012 primary heats (particularly those taken 1-3 years before the election) should be regarded with all the seriousness of an MSNBC online poll.

They may be fun, but they aren’t serious news. The polls are, to quote a classic TV line, “very interesting, but stupid.” There are two reasons these trial heats don’t matter.

First, we don’t know which candidates are running. The latest Rasmussen poll assumes candidacies by Palin, Huckabee, Romney, Newt Gingrich, Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), and Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN). What if Palin, Gingrich, and Barbour, who got a combined 39 percent of the vote in the Rasmussen poll, decide not to run? Until we know who’s running, trial heats are pointless. It’s like asking someone to bet on who’s going to win the heavyweight boxing championship without knowing who’s fighting.

Second, national polling would be fine if there were a national primary, but there isn’t. The national poll numbers tells us nothing meaningful because we have a primary process where the votes of early states drastically change the race in future states. Rudy Giuliani continued to show strong national poll numbers long after his campaign effectively began its collapse.

The numbers in trial heats only reflect name recognition at a national level. For example, Huckabee and Romney were both nonentities in national polls taken throughout 2007, but emerged as two of the top contenders for the nomination based on Romney’s money and organization and Huckabee’s performance in Iowa.

National trial heats have no predictive power. Doing more polling in early primary states would have some merit, but those voters aren’t focused on the campaign yet, so the results will still be based solely on name recognition.

If there’s one value to a 2012 poll, it’s favorability numbers. The internet conversation is often dominated by people who loathe Huckabee, Palin, or Romney, and these loathers often assume all who don’t favor their own candidate of choice loathe him or her. In truth, polls show the loathers are in the minority. Any of these three would have an easier time uniting Republicans than did John McCain.

However, the headline news of a 2012 poll is a worthless piece of filler that serious people shouldn’t waste time on.

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Lichtman explains his model this way:

The Keys show that elections are not horse races in which candidates surge ahead or fall behind on the campaign trail, with pollsters keeping score. Rather, a pragmatic American electorate chooses a president according to the performance of the party holding the White House as measured by the consequential events and episodes of a term — economic boom and bust, foreign policy successes and failures, social unrest, scandal, and policy innovation. Nothing that a candidate has said or done during a campaign, when the public discounts everything as political, has changed his prospects at the polls. Debates, advertising, television appearances, news coverage, and campaign strategies — the usual grist for the punditry mills — count for virtually nothing on Election Day.

The Keys include 13 diagnostic questions that are stated as propositions that favor reelection of the incumbent party. When five or fewer of these propositions are false or turned against the party holding the White House, that party wins another term in office. When six or more are false, the challenging party wins…

The verdict of the Keys for 2008 does not depend on the particular candidate nominated by either party. So my advice to Republicans and Democrats alike in the primary elections is to vote for the candidate you believe in for 2008 and forget the misleading pursuit of the false grail of so-called “electability.”

I would add one caveat to what Lichtman suggests and point out that Charisma and Heroism seem to be exception to the, “The candidate doesn’t matter rule.” When the Incumbent Party nominee is Charismatic or a National Hero that is a statement that helps the incumbent party, as well as if the nominee of the Incumbent Party is not a National Hero or Charismatic. As a challenging party needs six keys to topple the administration, if in 2008, Obama has five keys against him, Republicans would do better to nominate a Charismatic candidate like Mike Huckabee or Sarah Palin, or a National like David Petraeus instead of Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich.

One also has to say that campaigns matter in that they define the party and the candidate and whether they can get downticket candidates elected. Also, if a campaign is down a key or two, a flawless strategic campaign might be able to pull a shock and win the electoral college.  

In his initial examination last November, Lichtman gave 7 keys to the Democrats. However, two of those keys appeared to me to flip. The success of the surge counted as a Foreign Policy success and John McCain was a national hero, flipping another key. However, by my count, Democrats picked up two of the unknown keys went to the Democrats, giving Barack Obama, 7 keys, one more than needed to win the popular vote against the incumbent administration. Here’s how I scored it:

What about the 13 keys for 2012? The most immediate thing Republicans can do to help their White House chances for 2012 is to capture a net pick-up of 25 seats and get to at least 203 House Seats. Should Obama be the Democratic nominee in 2012 (as we can fully expect), he will have 2 keys in his favor: Being the incumbent and his charisma.

Other than the GOP’s own candidate for 2012 and the 2010 Mid-terms, whether Obama will obtain enough keys to win re-election is something that will depend entirely on how well (or poorly) the next four years go.

Her favorable rating among the Republcians is 91% including 65% very favorable. 91% approval. If you assume that only those who thought she hurt the ticket didn’t approve of her, that would mean that 55% of people who thought she hurt the ticket had a favorable opinion of her.

But this may be the most amazing number of all. They went ahead and asked people their choice for 2012. Palin received 64%,  12% were for Huckabee, and 11% were for Mitt Romney. Now, you’re probably saying, “A poll four years before the election is completely useless.”

And you have a point. But believe me, I’ve been following these polls for a long time, and I remember all the way back to 1992  CBS News took a poll right after election day and the results: Jack Kemp, 24%, Bob Dole, 23%.  Both this time around and in 2000, I never heard of a candidate breaching 50%, let alone 60% in a pre-primary poll ever. 64% is a monster number.

Now, there are many things that are true. Palin has probably got one, maybe two books ahead of her that will talk about the campaign as well as provide a vision for the country. She’s got a tough situation in Alaska, but her fiscal prudence in good years will make that easier. Cutting spending with a surplus is not usually done. Yes, there’s a lot of time and things can. Yes, she may not want to run.

While I’m a Huckabee guy, it’s really hard to imagine that if she wants this nomination and she doesn’t mess up royally, that she wouldn’t get the nomination. In fact, if she’s putting up these type of numbers in two years, you’d probably Huckabee and Romney both stand aside.

As a side-note, I have to note the negatives for both Huckabee and Romney. While not as low as Palin’s 8%, both are viewed quite positively, Romney by 81% of the party, Huckabee by 80% with negatives of 15% and 16%. The people who have very negative opinions of both men make up 4 and 5% of the GOP.

Unfortunately, for Huckabee and Romney, these people all blog.

However, with so many people looking beyond 2008, if you’re going to do that, what about what people are saying.

First, tonight, Senator Blance Lincoln (D-AR) is breathing a sigh of relief:

Huckabee, 52, said he wouldn’t rule out making a future bid for the presidency, but said he definitely would not run for a seat in Congress

So, no he won’t be running against Blanche Lincoln for U.S. Senate and I can’t say that I can blame him. And given that the NRSC knows this 2+ years in advance, they better not be planning on a late minute Hail Mary pass to get Huckabee to do something he’s said no to. As for the Presidency, Huckabee said:  

Huckabee, considered by some a frontrunner for a 2012 presidential bid, said his plans are uncertain. A lot may depend on what Palin is doing four years from now, he said.

“I still want to believe she’s going to be the vice president,” Huckabee said. “But if she isn’t, she won’t just completely fade away.”

I just cannot see a Huckabee and Palin as rivals. Huckabee and Romney, sure. Huckabee and Palin would split too many people.

Speaking of Romney, he was in Louisiana and had this to say:

Romney, who sought the Republican presidential nomination earlier this year, said he will not be on the 2012 ballot.

“I think it’s unlikely that I’ll be running again,” Romney said.

Romney compared a run for the White House to a window opening offering the right timing and the right opportunity.

Romney could change his mind. While I’m not his biggest fan, he’s been through an up and down year. And I don’t know how emotionally he is. Financially, he invested $40 million in his campaign and he’d have to invest more in 2012. Would he get a better return on his investment? I got to say it’s doubtful.

If Proposition 8 is approved, Mitt Romney could be a great candidate for Governor of California in 2010 (he recently bought a house there.) The GOP has no solid candidates and if he wants an opportunity to clean up a disaster, California would be it.

In the state of Louisiana, Romney did have an idea as to who might be a candidate:

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney predicted Thursday that Gov. Bobby Jindal will consider a 2012 run for the White House if John McCain loses on Nov. 4.

“Bobby Jindal will certainly be taking a look at it,” Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, said on WWL-Radio.

Well, what did Bobby Jindal have to say about that?

Jindal denied Thursday afternoon that he is mounting a presidential campaign despite multiple fundraising trips outside the state and an upcoming visit to Iowa.

“I am not running for the White House in 2012,” Jindal said.

He said he plans to run for re-election for governor in 2011. It is not his “intent” to run for the White House in 2016, he said.

Jindal said his goal is to serve two terms as governor and then leave public office to focus on his family.

“I don’t have any intent of running for any other office. I’d like to ideally go back to the private sector,” Jindal said.

Jindal said he wants his three young children to grow up in Louisiana.

“What’s important in life is to use your talents to help improve your community,” he said.

I don’t think Jindal is lying about 2012. It’d be impossible for him to run for Governor in 2011, while simultaneously carrying on a Presidential campaign. He’s clearly thought out what he wants to do in life, and it doesn’t involve trapsing around Iowa.

It seems bizarre that so many people are willing to write about and speculate on who might run in 2012 that they don’t care very much to listen to what these people have to say. Some of the biggest names mentioned for 2012 are Huckabee, Romney, and Jindal.

Huckabee: May run, but it could depend on what Palin does.

Romney: Probably won’t run.

Jindal: Definitely won’t run.

While I hope if Republicans lose, they’ll nominate a better candidate next time, the simple fact of the matter is that we can really only run one Presidential race at a time, and after the nominating’s done, we’ve only got one candidate. Do what’s right today and worry about tomorrow when it comes. If people are banking on the fact that they’re going to get a specific favorite candidate come 2012 and are giving up on this race, they may wish to think again.