A morning palate cleanser, fortuitously timed to coincide with The One’s approval rating sinking ever closer to the depths reached by Dubya in his second term. Per The Hill, Obama may already be less popular than Bush ever was with … congressional Democrats:

Sources who attended a meeting of House chiefs of staff on Monday say the room was seething with anger over the immense damage being done to the Democratic Party and talk was of scrapping rollout events for the Affordable Care Act.

“Here we are, we’re supposed to be selling this to people, and it’s all screwed up,” one chief of staff ranted. “This either gets fixed or this could be the demise of the Democratic Party.

“It’s probably the worst I’ve ever seen it,” the aide said of the recent mood on Capitol Hill. “It’s bad. It’s really bad.”…

“Is [Obama] even more unpopular than George W. Bush? I think that’s already happened,” said one Democratic chief of staff…

“The only way he can really make it up to us is by fixing this s–t,” one Democratic House aide said.

Sorry, pal — Sebelius hinted yesterday that the s–t won’t be fixed anytime soon. As for Bush, well-received appearances like this plus the fact that he’s been so gracious as an ex-president in refusing to criticize O makes me wonder if he won’t be quite as radioactive to GOP candidates in the 2016 campaign as he was in 2008 and 2012. No one’s going to mention him on foreign policy but you may see the hawkish candidates like Christie defend continued NSA surveillance and drone strikes by emphasizing that it was Bush, not Obama, who pioneered them. Christie, in fact, has patterned his own presidential pitch after Bush’s strategy in the late 90s, running up a big margin in a gubernatorial race with help from Latino voters and citing that as proof that he can play with demographics that other GOPers can’t. Depending upon what happens over the next two years with amnesty, you may even see Christie, Scott Walker, and other fans of immigration reform celebrate Bush for having tried to pass something in 2007. No one will use the words “compassionate conservatism” but that theme will be there, however it’s phrased. Unless of course Jeb decides to run, in which case everyone else in the field will turn on a dime and proclaim the Bush era an unmitigated disaster that must never be repeated.

If you’re pressed for time and can’t watch it all, stick with the first two clips. Although then you’ll miss Leno’s ObamaCare joke.