Nine months in and the extremists’ reaction to Obama is as if he has enacted all of his agenda and changed the course of American history. Now, that’s kind of what we elected him for, but I certainly didn’t expect it all to happen in less than a year. And for sure, it is taking some time. You can feel the impatience on the left.
But does he deserve all of this right-wing nuttery so early on? Of course not. He hasn’t earned it. He may, and if he does I’d say that the liberals and progressives will be happy. But he’s never going to make the kooks happy. I mean, imagine if Bush had even pretended to listen to all of us who protested against the war in Iraq. Imagine that all of those good points that were being made before the war were taken into consideration. But they weren’t, we all know that.
We were ignored, quite proudly, by the patriots in charge and their media brethren. It’s still a little hard to believe that such an atmosphere existed, but you know it did, even past the 2004 election. And now, proven right by the stupidity and incompetence of the war, we are rewarded with…more right-wing wackiness.
A reader at Andrew Sullivan makes a salient point regarding earnings and time served:
The heaviest hitters in the Republican party, and in the conservative media have loudly and proudly called for Obama’s failure. Liberals who even softly criticized Bush were roundly shamed and called terrorist-loving-America-haters. George W. Bush, despite the controversial beginning of his presidency, was given the chance – – no, in fact, after 9/11, he was given all the unopposed freedom in the world to succeed or fail based upon his own decisions and his own performance. Bush EARNED his hatred.
Obama has not had that luxury.
It’s that “liberal media” once again controlling and defining the conversation, pandering to the 20%’ers. This is what happens when we treat politics like a reality television show.