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Lost at the White House

All the hope which Obama generated before his election seems to be evaporating at a great clip. Whilst that is obviously unfortunate, the man has really only himself to blame. Great rhetoric and claims and aspirations - but little in the way of delivering! In fact, in many areas = think military spending - Obama is worse that George Bush.

Maureen Dowd, often acerbic in her regular op-ed column in The New York Times gives a sober assessment of Obama in "Lost in a Maze":

"The waterfall of leaks on Afghanistan underlines the awful truth: We’re not in control.

Not since Theseus fought the Minotaur in his maze has a fight been so confounding.

The more we try to do for our foreign protectorates, the more angry they get about what we try to do. As Congress passed $59 billion in additional war funding on Tuesday, not only are our wards not grateful, they’re disdainful.

Washington gave the Wall Street banks billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the back, handing out a fortune in bonuses to the grifters who almost wrecked our economy.

Washington gave the Pakistanis billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the back, pledging to fight the militants even as they secretly help the militants.

We keep getting played by people who are playing both sides."

A not dissimilar theme is taken up by Stephen Walt in "Obama is zero for four and Republicans are sitting pretty" on his blog on FP:

"If I were a Republican Party leader, and I didn't care a whit about the welfare of the United States (and no, those two descriptors are not synonymous), I'd be feeling pretty good right now. My party will almost certainly pick up a lot of seats in Congress come November, which is the normal mid-term pattern after a big swing the other way, and this shift will make it even easier for the GOP to obstruct future Obama initiatives. More importantly, I'd be increasingly confident about regaining the White House in 2012 too."

Continue reading Walt's also sober analysis of the Obama White House here.

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