President Obama's approval ratings climbed to 47% in a new Gallup poll. And he has his best "disapproval" rating since July.

CBS News:

President Obama's approval ratings are higher than his disapproval ratings for the first time since July, according to the latest Gallup poll.

The flip comes days after congressional Republicans had an embarrassing flip of their own, agreeing to extend the payroll tax cut for just two months after insisting they would not do so.

About 47 percent of Americans approve of the way he is doing his job, slightly more than the 45 percent who disapprove of his job performance in the days between Dec. 21 and 23.

Mr. Obama's disapproval ratings have been consistently higher than his approval ratings since July. For most of the intervening months, more than 50 percent of Americans did not approve of the way he was doing his job.

According to Gallup, the "fault line" between one-term presidency and "probable" re-election for incumbent presidents is about 48 percent approval.

Not a word about the president's "flip": that he would veto any legislation that contained pipeline authorization. That little nugget seems to have been totally forgotten by the media.

CBS is ascribing this bump to the president's tax fight with the Republicans, and his apparent "victory" in achieving a two month extension of the payroll tax holiday.

But that's guesswork, and is based on nothing in the poll. It could very well be a statistical anomaly or a something entirely different - a feeling of expanisveness due to the season. The truth is, Obama is still getting terrible numbers on his handling of the economy and that won't change anytime soon.