He's the President, not the decider

One of the things I most disliked about the last Bush Administration (and believe me it's a varied, large, and tasteless buffet) was the use of War Powers to make the President more powerful than the office should be, and then stoking the dangerous and FoxNews perpetuated idea that the President personally is keeping you from being blown up in your sleep by a swarthy "evil-doer"...this was too much even in an age where the office has become way too centralized.

I think this is also the mistake that some on the left have in being overly critical Obama. Not that he shouldn't be criticized, far from it (I mean the tag-team of Tim Geithner & Larry Summers -- that's some nice appointin' there, Mr. President, how's that workin' out for ya'?), but far be it from me that some on the left are either too naive or too cynical to join their jaundiced kinsfolk on the right.

The President isn't and shouldn't be your all powerful parental figure. Not all failures, or successes, fall upon the shoulders of "President Daddy". The foot-stomping and desire to view everything out of the White House as some calculated plan to "screw you" personally and/or play you for a sucker is as funny as it is petty. Much of this comes from the never reformed Hillary is 44 folk. Which is really funny because for the life of me I'm trying to imaging a world where Hillary Clinton achieves as much as Obama has or would have made different decisions that were "more liberal" and then actually obtained them.

It's one thing to constructively criticize Obama, and as with any President he deserves criticizing. But you have to acknowledge at the same time he's got both a lot of roadblocks, enablers, and douchebags to deal with. The even funnier theory is that it's all Rahm Emanuel's doing...which is a little like thinking that Bush wouldn't be so bad but for Karl Rove.