How many among them would have the courage, as The New York Times' Obamaphile columnist David Brooks did the other day, to write that the new president "is not who we thought he was"?

If a president named Bush were doing what Obama has done, in the citadels of the left (Hollywood, the academy, and the remains of mainline churches and the establishment press), what would the take be on presidential proposals to compel small businesses to pony up for employee health-care and retirement plans?

Would they make any cynical remarks about the extent to which the reversal of policies (a) to tap oil shale deposits in the West, (b) to drill offshore, and (c) to encourage nuclear power will increase our dependence on tin-pot oil despots who detest us?

Would they still maintain an adamant silence on the sharply higher consumer costs for goods and services flowing from caps imposed on manufacturers' carbon emissions, and consequently making life in tough economic times tougher not merely for some businesses -- but all?

How would they spin the signature of a president who campaigned against pork-barrel earmarks, on a measure containing not just an earmark here and there -- but (please sit down for this) nearly 9,000? Not to mention a $787 billion stimulus package marking the nation's largest spending increase ever? Nor that such spending measures are intended less to strengthen the economy than to advance his social agenda (health care, education, alternative fuels, global warming) -- and fast?

And, if the incumbent were Bush, would they voice any wrath at an unemployment rate now breaching 8 percent and headed toward the wild blue yonder?

Would they routinely blame today's dismal economy on the Neanderthal policies and practices of yesterday's president?

Would they eviscerate the incumbent president and his congressional footmen for declaiming time and again, "We won!"

So, just asking:

If the current president carried the name Bush while pushing the same policies Obama is advancing now, how starkly different would the Delphic pronouncements on him and his policies be -- by the nameless oracles, seated over there on the left, who rule the world?