You look at White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’s attack on Gallup . . .

“If I was a heart patient and Gallup was my EKG, I’d visit my doctor,” Gibbs said in the morning, off-camera briefing with reporters. “Five days ago there was an eleven-point spread. Now there is a one-point spread. I’m sure a six-year-old with a Crayon could do something not unlike that.”

. . . and you’re left wondering: Why? It’s not like Gallup’s numbers are so far out of whack with everyone else’s. Why couldn’t Gibbs acknowledge that the president – and the country – are going through a rough patch right now? Nobody – well, almost nobody – is saying that Obama’s numbers can’t improve. Why, when confronted with metrics that show the public is losing faith in Obama, must Gibbs go on the attack and insist it’s nonsense?

I suspect that this is an old habit. During the 2008 campaign, “working the refs” – i.e., bullying, haranguging, or berating members of the press covering Obama – worked quite well for the campaign; campaign manager David Plouffe’s book is apparently full of cases where he and other staffers wore down those covering the campaign.

But it’s worth noting that after a while, spin stops working. Chanting “the economy is improving” will only improve public perception so much; after a while, people start noticing that they and their friends and neighbors can’t find jobs. Chanting ”there is nothing significant about any changes in the president’s approval rating” sooner or later turns into whistling past the graveyard.

And there are times when the big, furious pushback fails; as noted earlier today, the DNC tried to argue that scoffing and skepticism about the merits of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize amounted to throwing in with the terrorists. Well, 66 percent of Americans aren’t buying it.