Will Obama's Slump Continue?

Every president faces a rough patch or two. Obama's may be more troubling than most. A presidency that rests on a cult of personality rather than ideas is particularly vulnerable when the personality proves to be less attractive than initially thought.

Obama has not expended the massive political capital he brought with him to the office on anything meaningful. He did not suffer a drop in polls as Ronald Reagan did by doing the hard work of wringing inflation from the economy. Obama lost his popularity with only a failed stimulus package to show for it. He has not worked to sow the seeds of policy initiatives which will bear fruit later on. He frittered away his high standing on government earmarks and liberal political payback.

It would be a mistake to think Obama is permanently hobbled. His large congressional majorities may well deliver some type of health care reform for which he can take credit, and the CBO numbers indicate that health care reform won't completely bankrupt the nation for six to eight years. The economy is likely to eventually rebound, in spite of Obama's best efforts. But what has been lost is the "opportunity" which Rahm Emanuel bragged about to use both the recession and Obama's popularity to enact a fundamental shift in government.

Whether due to political overreach or to sagging employment, the chance to remake America to suit Obama's liberal vision is quickly slipping from the president's grasp. And you don't get opportunities like that very often.

Obama will recover, not because he's a good president, but because liberalism has invested too much in Obama. A full court press of the leftwing propaganda machine will re-burnish Obama.

Obama's failure would involve liberalism from top to bottom. Liberalism dodged away from Carter - claiming he failed because he wasn't liberal enough. Well, Obama is about as liberal as all but the kookiest of the kook left could desire. If Obama doesn't work, liberalism doesn't work.

The majority of Americans were duped in November. They were fed a steady diet of outright lies about President Bush and the war in Iraq, not to mention Guantanamo. They wanted a clean break. Well, they got it.

We were supposed to get a center-governing moderately liberal near-genius who would bring us all together in order to conquer the many problems America has at home and abroad. HopenChange. What we got was a dishonest neophyte who is busily dividing us from each other, coddling our enemies, insulting our friends, ignoring our real problems to tackle secondary issues like health care and fairy-tail issues like global warming, and robbing from the next several generations to pay back the friends of the political left.

People are beginning to realize they've been had.

We don't get do-overs. We're stuck with Obama until January 20th, 2013. It will be a very hard lesson. As Mencken once opined, people get the government they deserve, and they usually get it good and hard. Obama is the political two-by-four that is going to whack America upside the head and (hopefully) knock some sense into us, if he doesn't kill us in the process. If we learn this lesson, we may never have to deal with the likes of Obama, again.

Given the attention span of the voting public, however, it may take more than one whack to learn the lesson.