A new Washington Post poll finds , among other things, that a full 70 percent of Americans either believe Barack Obama has “tried but failed” to solve “the major problems facing the country” or has actually “made problems worse.” That compares, by the way, with 71 percent of Americans in a December 2008 Pew Center poll who thought the same of outgoing President Bush. Yet in analyzing the polling data, Post staffers Jon Cohen and Dan Balz buried bad news for the president deep in their page A1 August 11 article and suggested the sour view Americans have on the Congress was the bigger story for the upcoming election season (emphasis mine):