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Why an Icon Is Fading

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Happy one-year anniversary, Swish. You sure can pick ‘em, baby.

After having a meringue pie thrown into your deceptive face yesterday in Massachusetts’ U.S. Senate race, you must feel like the newlywed hubby who agreed to stay home and cook while his newlywed wife went out for one last fling with an old beau.

You are as low this afternoon as you were heavenward last Jan. 20.

In the only three statewide elections in this country since Swish Obama settled into the White House a year ago this morning, the Democrats have beautifully played the role of a mop. They were socked in the schnozzola in gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia in November, and yesterday in Massachusetts by the forces of new U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, GOP leader-in-waiting.

No trend here. No dissatisfaction, baby. Nah. That is what those darned elitists on the Republican side are saying. And you know, baby, how they fib for a living.

Of course there is voter dissatisfaction — but they are angry with those crooked, immoral, unfairly rich Republicans. They love us, baby.

Then how did we lose? Are you serious, man? You never heard of an accident?

Let’s Get Serious

Every President sustains personal and party-wide setbacks. They are as inevitable as the varying degrees of responsibility that a President must bear.

Mr. Obama’s ever-expanding circle of advisors has, not so deftly developed an ever-expanding list of imaginary explanations for the nagging neon defeats that have haunted their boss.

None of the defeats in the three states, we are told by Obama advisors, was the fault of the President or the Democrat Party. The problem in all three cases laid elsewhere, they explained. Just by the darnedest streak of foul luck did Republicans happen to, almost deflectively, attract enough votes to win.

America loves ya, Swish, the yes-men and short-haired, overweight lesbians with which he has surrounded himself, whisper into his ear at breakfast and lunch.

Defective Democrat candidates ran in Virginia and Massachusetts, they said, and in New Jersey, Gov. Jon Corzine, who has more money than the real Messiah, was a victim of the national mood of voter anger, plus a California-style budget deficit and near record unemployment. To say it differently, the Obama advisors are telling us the dog ate my homework, walked to the cemetery, turned left, of course, laid down and d crawled into his grave.

Why He Is Failing

Swish, as the erstwhile Messiah, has just shed the final three letters of his sobriquet for several reasons:

• The President, based on 12 months of daily inspection by neutral analysts, is not nearly the intellectual his handlers promised he was during the campaign and throughout his early administration. His thinking process remains dense, mysterious. His locution is muddled. His engagement frequently is lacking. He appears chronically disinterested in most topics.

His inability to inspire, think with clarity and communicate directly were the three main reasons he was counseled last summer to give up nearly daily press conferences.

• The President is not the astute politician we were assured he was. After serving through a year of scores of crises, his ability to motivate has been disappointingly absent. To qualify as a leader, one must have followers, and Mr. Obama still has plenty. Trouble is, they are mostly in the media.

Someone has to tell this poor, and fading, man the truth. Any volunteers?