The Incredible Shrinking Obama

I disagree with Barack Obama on grounds of principle, and would vote and campaign against him even if he were the most competent executive and political leader ever known.  (In fact, such competence would have made him more dangerous than, in fact, he has been.  And that's been bad enough.)

But there is a growing sense, even among some who would otherwise be inclined to support him, that he's just plain in over his head.

Mark Halperin was saying it in Time magazine already back in October 2010.

But there's a rising chorus of others saying it now:

Thus, for example, Peter Wehner, writing for Commentary magazine, says that "Obama is Simply Overmatched by Events."

Even Maureen Dowd, a liberal New York Times columnist with a very sharp tongue for icky conservative yokels like me, finds herself "Dreaming of a Superhero."

And Edward Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek and former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine, bluntly labels Mr. Obama, at New York Times bestselling-book-length, "The Amateur."

But, seriously, can anybody reasonably be surprised at this?  When we elected as president of the United States a man who had spent not quite eight relatively undistinguished years in the State Senate of Illinois, followed by not quite four years in the United States Senate (at least two of them devoted to campaigning for the presidency), was anybody under the illusion that we were electing a man of remarkable executive achievement and leadership?  Really?