On The Job Training For New President Starting To Bother The Economist

The March 26 issue of The Economist has a piece that details some of Obama's shortcomings in office. They had endorsed his election but now they're looking back on the campaign and realizing that they were forewarned that he had no executive experience. They also now realize that he was never vetted by the media.
They seem surprised that independent voters are starting to turn against Obama and the Democrats. They also seem a little surprised his poor performance in office has given him no better popularity than Bush at the same point. They seem to be saying, "We know he f__ks up by the numbers but we don't fully understand why a rational being would ever give a Republican any serious consideration." It is both sad and funny when the media disseminate BS, have some awareness that it indeed is BS but can't stop believing their own brazen BS.
At the beginning of the campaign Obama loudly and repeatedly announced that little but racism could be expected from John McCain. This was based on no evidence from the campaign and believed by gullible lefties despite McCain's long public history that lacks one racist act. Yet the poor Economist seems surprised and mystified that Obama has not delivered the bipartisan spirit of governing that he promised. They still do not realize that blather was only for the rubes. The Economist's continued amazement in the face of harsh reality indicates that they are nowhere near finished buying into Obama's BS.
The remainder of this post are a few exact quotations from The Economist's piece.

HILLARY CLINTON’S most effective quip, in her long struggle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination last year, was that the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training. It went to the heart of the nagging worry about the silver-tongued young senator from Illinois: that he lacked even the slightest executive experience, and that in his brief career he had never really stood up to powerful interests, whether in his home city of Chicago or in the wider world. Might Mrs Clinton have been right about her foe?
. . . . . . .
. . . at home Mr Obama has had a difficult start. His performance has been weaker than those who endorsed his candidacy, including this newspaper, had hoped. Many of his strongest supporters—liberal columnists, prominent donors, Democratic Party stalwarts—have started to question him. As for those not so beholden, polls show that independent voters again prefer Republicans to Democrats, a startling reversal of fortune in just a few weeks. Mr Obama’s once-celestial approval ratings are about where George Bush’s were at this stage in his awful presidency. Despite his resounding electoral victory, his solid majorities in both chambers of Congress and the obvious goodwill of the bulk of the electorate, Mr Obama has seemed curiously feeble.
There are two main reasons for this. The first is Mr Obama’s failure to grapple as fast and as single-mindedly with the economy as he should have done. His stimulus package, though huge, was subcontracted to Congress, which did a mediocre job: too much of the money will arrive too late to be of help in the current crisis. . . . . And he has taken too long to produce his plan for dealing with the trillions of dollars of toxic assets which fester on banks’ balance-sheets.
The failure to staff the Treasury is a shocking illustration of administrative drift. There are 23 slots at the department that need confirmation by the Senate, and only two have been filled. This is not the Senate’s fault. Mr Obama has made a series of bad picks of people who have chosen or been forced to withdraw . . . .
Second, Mr Obama has mishandled his relations with both sides in Congress. Though he campaigned as a centrist and promised an era of post-partisan government, that’s not how he has behaved. . . . But if Mr Obama had done a better job of selling his package, and had worked harder at making sure that Republicans were included in drafting it, they would have found it more difficult to oppose his plans.
If Mr Obama cannot work with the Republicans, he needs to be certain that he controls his own party. Unfortunately, he seems unable to. Put bluntly, the Democrats are messing him around.

ht/Stop the ACLU