Is Barack Obama now the most unpopular US president since Jimmy Carter?

From Nile Gardiner - Telegraph-UK:

Gallup... has Barack Obama’s approval rating at just 39 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, and down 13 percentage points since the start of June.... Strikingly, Barack Obama has achieved the lowest ratings for any US president at this stage of his first term in office for 32 years, since 1979...

You have to go back to Jimmy Carter in August 1979 (at 33 percent), to find a US president less popular than Obama at this stage of his presidency. And the historic job approval average for all US presidents since Harry S. Truman for the 11th quarter of their first term is 52.2 percent, more than 13 points ahead of Obama’s current level...

Could President Obama’s approval rating fall as low as Jimmy Carter’s, hovering just above 30 percent? Undoubtedly it could, with the economic situation deteriorating and consumer confidence plunging. This is a distinctly Carter-esque presidency, with a weak president unable to lead... and declining American power on the world stage.

This is shaping up to be a disastrous summer for Mr. Obama, with a huge drop in public confidence in his ‘hope and change’ presidency. Gallup’s latest poll is probably the shape of things to come, and the president has by no means reached rock bottom. There is a long way further for him to fall, and if the precedent set by Jimmy Carter is anything to go by, Obama could be scraping the 30 percent approval mark before long.