And during his first year, Obama has faced an opposition party more concerned about politics than the daily struggles of the people. The Party of No has decided that defeating Obama is more important than returning the country to prosperity and finding a way to bring our soldiers home.
It hasn't been an easy first year. But compared to the previous eight years, it's been a good first year.
I usually don’t like to pick on the hapless interns who have to write the editorial, but this is all beyond idiotic. Don’t take my word for it, just look at what America’s leading media liberals have had to say about His Oneness.
First there’s the New York Times’s Paul Krugman, the former Enron advisor turned liberal columnist, who declares that “he wasn’t the one we’ve been waiting for,” adding that, “I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.”
Then there’s Mortimer Zuckerman, the liberal owner of US News & World Report, went ballistic:
In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting.
…
I don’t know what has happened to them. His appointments present somebody who has a lot to learn about how government works. He better get some very talented businesspeople who know how to implement things. It’s unbelievable. Everybody says so. You can’t believe how dismayed people are. That’s why he’s plunging in the polls.
Zuckerman addresses the Post’s claims that Obama has improved our standing in the world:
He’s improved America’s image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.”
The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around.
An Arab scholar at Johns Hopkins called it as such several months ago:
In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth.
He has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in Iran have not "unclenched their fist," nor have they abandoned their nuclear quest.
On domestic policy, the Post-Trib has little to say, never mentioning the stinking corpse of the healthcare bill, nor Obama’s making “stimulus” a dirty word, the $12 trillion debt, nor the wasteful cash-for-clunkers or the economic disaster that would be cap-and-tax.
Even the New York Times’s “former radical” Frank Rich faults Obama on domestic policy in his column today:
On the economic front, Obama needs both stylistic and substantive makeovers. He has stepped up the populist rhetoric lately — and markedly after political disaster struck last week — but few find this serene Harvard-trained lawyer credible when slinging populist rhetoric at “fat-cat” bankers.Rich is restrained. One of the less-restrained “progressive” Kos Kids laid it on Obama today:
I'm one of the faceless millions who donated to Obama, encouraged my friends and family to vote for him, and generally got more involved in politics than I have been for a long, long time. I was estactic and hopefuly when he was elected, along with strong Democratic majorities.
Now, a year after his inauguration, I am angry, disappointed and depressed. I honestly can't say that I will put forth any money or any time to help the Democratic party this year.
Obama may have lost the New York Times, the Arab world, 75% of America’s independents, wealthy media moguls like Mortimer Zuckerman, and the Kos Kids, but at least he still has the intern at the Post-Tribune.
