The White House is showing signs of stress. We see increasing defensiveness from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, whose daily dips into incoherence are no longer even newsworthy. Asked to respond to long-delayed criticism from President Bush over Obama's national security and domestic policies, Gibbs trotted out, yet again, the administration's mindless retort, "We kept score last November, and we won."
But Gibbs outdid himself when he was unable to name a solitary nation that has benefited from a single-payer health care system. While Obama steadfastly maintains he is not angling for a public monopoly, everyone knows that is the inevitable result -- and intent -- of his plan.
Obama received another setback last week, when Congress repudiated his feckless policy on the Iranian crisis with a resounding 405-1 vote in favor of a resolution of solidarity with the Iranian protestors. Even the Democrats didn't have the guts to go on record endorsing Obama's positions of moral equivalence and opportunistic passivity.
I can't help but believe that Obama will be his own worst enemy in his efforts to reverse the trend in his popularity as the disconnect between support for his policy agenda and his personal popularity continues to erode. Every indication is that he is a stubborn ideologue ill-suited to make policy adjustments when reality continues to gobsmack his purblind vision.
While Obama resembles Jimmy Carter in some respects, he is starkly different in his aversion to attend to details, preferring to bask in his broader vision and assume -- narcissistically -- that his force of will alone will bring about the results he seeks.
Consider: He has refused to backtrack on his commitment to close Gitmo, despite overwhelming public disapproval of the policy and no plans for prisoner relocation. He clings to the fantasy that effeminate overtures to the world's thuggish dictators will entice them to behave. He is philosophically impervious to the 100 percent failure rate of socialized medicine in world history and to the mounting research and expert opinion contradicting his intractable position on man-made global warming. His so-called stimulus money -- the limited percentage of it that was front-ended -- is being allocated disproportionately at the state level to relatively unproductive rural projects at the behest of some local politicians, who have more incentive to bring home the bacon than conform to Obama's directives toward shovel-ready projects.
As more time passes and Obama's ability to scapegoat his predecessor declines further, along with his apparent charisma, more Americans will see just how different Obama's worldview is from theirs -- and they'll begin to see more clearly the woeful ineffectiveness and destructiveness of his policies.
Wishful thinking perhaps -- but that's better than I had a few weeks ago.