Barack Obama and family celebrate USA’s birthday in Butte, Montana, July 4, 2008 – and the birthday of his eldest daughter, Malia.

Today, August 4, 2010, is Barack Obama’s 49th birthday. It seems to say something about who he is that his wife and daughters are on vacation at the moment. He is travelling to Chicago for fund-raising events tomorrow, and will “spend the night in his Hyde Park home” there.

It has been fashionable for some time, even or especially among some of his early strong supporters, to express disappointment in President Obama. And we have recently posted ourselves an article raising the question: “USA today .. another crackup is on its way?”

Yet while recognizing how, as New York Times columnist Frank Rich has recently put it,“There’s a Battle Outside and It Is Still Ragin’,” we also think it is important to stress that President Obama has now had at least the beginnings of some serious success with health care and financial reform – two crucial issues for the 21st century future of what Alexis de Tocqueville celebrated as Democracy in America, in the first half of the 19th century.

Similarly, it is easy enough to be dismayed by the decline in the reported Obama approval ratings among the American people, since he first took office a year-and-a-half ago. According to the latest Gallup Poll surveys his overall rating now stands at 45%. This somewhat disturbingly breaks down to 88% among Blacks, 54% among Hispanics, and 38% among Whites.  (His support among Whites was as high as 62% when he assumed office in January 2009. And it was 74% among Hispanics at that time – but still 88% among Blacks.)

Here too, however, the results are not all that surprising, given the vast challenges President Obama faced on assuming office, and the continuing struggles of the US and many other national economies (including Canada’s, despite what we sometimes pretend). Moreover, as the Gallup organization has also stressed recently, the current approval ratings do not look at all so bad in historical context. With 557 days in office now under his belt, Barack Obama stands at 45% .  This compares favourably enough with Bill Clinton at 43%, Ronald Reagan at 41%, Jimmy Carter at 39%, and Harry Truman at 34%, after the same 557 days in office. (And both Presidents Clinton and Reagan went on to much greater heights.)

Marilyn at the beach 1956. If she were alive today she would probably still want to sing Happy Birthday to the current Mr. President. But whether many would pay much attention to her, at the age of 84, is probably another question too.

There is no doubt, it seems to us at any rate, that, as Frank Rich and many others have recently alluded to, democracy in America today does need some kind of saviour. (To use a religious metaphor strictly for emphasis: and if the USA does have a  manifest destiny, it is as democracy in America, not capitalism in America, or free enterprise or the multinational corporate sector). To us Barack Obama still looks like the American politician extant today who stands the best chance of filling the bill. And we want to offer four different You Tube musical best wishes to him on his 49th birthday: Happy Birthday by the Wynton Marsalis Septet; Happy Birthday by Wynton Marsalis and friend – as an illustration of how to play jazz (well mostly just showing off, but whatever else Mr. Marsalis is an awesome trumpet player); Happy Happy Birthday Baby by The Tune Weavers, from way back when; and Happy Birthday Mr. President, by the late great Marilyn Monroe.