QUESTION ANSWERED – AT 8:28 P.M. ET:  A couple of posts down I expressed the wish that pollsters would ask more about Obama's foreign policy.  And now, by pure coincidence, an answer comes via Andrew Malcolm at the L.A. Time's Top of the Ticket blog.

It turns out that polling has been done by Scott Rasmussen, and the president doesn't come out too well:

The ink isn't even dry on the president's treaty signature in Prague on Thursday, and he's still dining in old castles over there. But Rasmussen Reports finds that not even....

...one-in-three thinks it was a good idea to agree with the Medvedev-Putin gang to cut the number of U.S. warheads to 1,550.

In fact, 53% think it was a bad idea. (Sixteen percent are unsure, but they're being rounded up as we write.)

In fact again, only 31% believes the Russians will actually do what they just promised to do. How's that for job approval?

Not that the leaders of either nation admit to paying attention to polls because they know best.

Speaking of knowing best, earlier this week the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner announced a new unilateral nuclear arms use policy for the United States. Obama prohibited this country from using such weapons against a non-nuclear-armed country even if that country unleashed biological or chemical weapons against the United States.

Previous presidents of both parties have chosen not to announce when they would not use nuclear weapons, thinking that the possibility of annihilation might discourage an enemy attack. Obama has now erased that uncertainty except, he says, for Iran and North Korea.

The same Rasmussen national phone poll finds that 55% of Americans disagree with the Democrat's thinking on this one too. One-in-four agree with Obama.

Additionally, 45% of Americans side with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in opposing Obama's decision to halt new nuclear weapons development; 34% like the Democrat's plan.

COMMENT:  I once asked the late Charles Kuralt to name the most important thing he'd learned in all his years of doing his "On the Road" series for CBS News, an enterprise that took him around the United States.  "I've always been impressed," he replied, "at how well informed Americans are."

That's a contrarian opinion, of course.  The elites believe that Americans, as opposed to say, rural Norwegians, are dumb and empty-headed.  The elites are wrong and Kuralt was right.  The poll results reported here show that Americans are watching, listening, interested, and forming their opinions, as they always have.

And those opinions are correct.  The president is taking us down a hazardous road.  Americans understand that.  I hope they send an appropriate message at the polls.

April 8, 2010