Obama: Is the Love Affair Over?

Nine months into his presidency, Barack Obama is starting to wonder if all the love is gone. While expected of Republicans, the media and stalwart liberals are starting to question President Obama’s magic beyond words.

Howard Fineman, a liberal commentator for Newsweek laments:

Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it.

Fineman goes on to remark:

The president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

Ouch!

The Black Informant queries whether President Obama is keeping his promises:

Obama isn’t the only President who made campaign promises only to break them later on. But just because other Presidents have gone down this road never makes it right. And just as past Presidents got checked by the public on broken campaign promises, current polling data continues to show a growing displeasure in “do as I say and not as I do” politics.

And the folks over at Politifact are keeping a tally of words and deeds.

PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.

We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

So what gives? We’ve only just begun. The romance can’t be over.

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