Eli Saslow writes in the WaPO about Obama’s attempt to connect with the hoi polloi.

…He is a rare president who comes from the middle class, yet people still perceive him as disconnected from it. As he arrived in Nashua, nearly two-thirds of Americans believed that his economic policies had hurt the country or made no difference at all; almost half thought he did not understand their problems.

Clinton was middle class, as was Truman, Nixon, Carter and Ford. LBJ didn’t wind up middle class, but he sure started there.

Obama has made it his goal in the past 10 days to convince them otherwise. In Nashua, he hoped to connect with the unemployed despite holding the country’s most prestigious job; to disparage Washington politics despite being a product of them; to have a self-described “direct conversation with the folks of New Hampshire” even as bomb squads, Secret Service officers, political dignitaries and television cameras occupied every corner of the room.

His visit to Nashua was his fourth domestic trip in less than two weeks, and it included a stop at a small business and a question-and-answer session in a high school gymnasium. He took off his jacket during his speech, rolled up his sleeves and put one hand in his pocket. He dropped his g’s and departed from scripted remarks to make jokes about “leakin’ ” roofs and “buyin’ new curtains.”

Oy.

…during his campaign for the presidency, Obama bungled some of his early attempts to connect with blue-collar workers, complaining about the price of arugula at Whole Foods and visiting a bowling alley only to roll an embarrassing score of 37. Some political rivals continue to disparage him as an elitist. Even his aides have sometimes worried that his intellect can be mistaken for condescension and that his composure can seem like detachment.

Obama is an academic elitist like many leftists.

They just know so darned much about everything they can’t resist butting into our lives any which way they can.

Those shortcomings were evident last month when Obama invited the previous two presidents to join him at the White House for a news conference about the U.S. relief effort in Haiti.

George W. Bush was simple and frank: “Just send us your cash,” he said.

Bill Clinton spoke without notes and verged on tears as he recalled his personal connection to the devastated country: “I have no words to say what I feel,” he said. “I had meals with people who are dead.”

Obama, meanwhile, spoke from prepared notes, looking all business, glancing to his left and to his right to establish eye contact while standing with perfect posture behind the lectern.