Pretty sure that the average American is way ahead of the President and his administration, Congress, the media, Wall Street, and academia (particularly that amateur sport called economics) on where the economy is headed. This confidence report is particularly telling:

U.S. consumer confidence plunged to another record low in February... The Conference Board, an industry group, said on Tuesday that its sentiment index fell to 25.0 from a downwardly revised 37.4 in January. The median forecast of economists polled by Reuters was for a reading of 35.5. [JR Note: that's not a miss, that is absolute incompetence]

This is why it isn't useful to put to much faith in "great leaders," the disillusionment can catalyze failure:

In February, the expectations index plunged to 27.5 from 42.5 the previous month.