An Obama Retrospective - One Year Later

This is a timely look back on 2009:

"Almost a year has passed since January 20, 2009 -- when the waters of the ocean no longer rose and America began to heal from the depredations of Republicans. Barack Obama has been our president for that long, and the people have started to wise up.

The light that shines on Barack Obama as president has reflected back an image that bears very little similarity to the iconic visage that floated above us all in 2008. Why has Barack Obama betrayed so many allies, broken so many promises, thrown so many pledges and people under the bus?

One simple aphorism (paraphrasing Winston Churchill) can explain it all. Barack Obama is no longer a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Much about his past remains murky, but faced with the need to govern, he has given the American people plenty of evidence of his nature...if only they will look. 

Obama is a cynic wrapped in a hypocrite inside a bully."

Can't say that I disagree based on what we have seen so far. Be sure to read the whole thing.

More here from Jennifer Rubin:

"At the end of 2009 many conservatives will have renewed appreciation for Winston Churchill’s admonition:

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” Conservatives and their fellow citizens were not generally (unless engaged on the battlefield) shot at, but they were bombarded with an avalanche of leftist policy proposals. And yet, as Bill Kristol observes: “The Obama administration (so far) hasn’t succeeded in doing too much damage to the American economy. Major parts of American society and the American polity are resisting the allure of a slide into European decadence. The climate change fear-mongers are increasingly discredited, and Copenhagen was a farce.”

In short, the Obama team didn’t succeed to the degree many of us anticipated and feared it would in refashioning domestic policy and achieving its free-market-killing initiatives . . .

This year ends with a sigh of relief from conservatives on the domestic front. Their work in opposing liberal Democratic policies is not, however, over. The health-care bill looms on the horizon and the Democrats will take a second pass at a number of their policy proposals. But there is a certain exhilaration in surviving the initial (and certainly the strongest barrage) of one’s political enemies. And for conservatives, finding that the American people are increasingly rallying to their side in the political debate is particularly gratifying."