The problem isn't just one of left/right. Dems gave voters a choice between hope and experience. Voters chose hope. Each month that the economy does not improve, each month the number of jobless rises, and home starts fall, voters begin to question the wisdom of betting the future on hope.

I expect the many bright people working to fix the problems (no facetiousness intended) are doing there best. I also think that many among this group are wondering whether to exploit their knowledge for personal gain or advancement.

Cleaning up after Bush was never going to be easy. I have never been convinced Obama was up to the job. However, we are now all faced with either wishing for his success or working to make sure he does not fail, because if he does fail, he's still going to be the richest ex-President evah!!

Well, go read Glenn today, you, too may want to weep when you are finished reading it.

Jack Goldsmith has an article in the New Republic, which makes the case that Obama has managed, through packaging, PR and rhetoric, to convey that he is all about civil liberties and human rights, but his actions have only strengthened the policies and programs that Bush and Cheney started.

From Glenn (emphasis was in the original):

In his New Republic article today, Goldsmith reviews what he calls the "eleven essential elements" of "the Bush approach to counterterrorism policy" and documents how -- with only a couple of minor exceptions -- Obama has embraced all of them.  In those cases where Obama has purported to "change" these elements, those changes are almost all symbolic and ceremonial, and the few changes that have any substance to them (banning the already-empty CIA black sites and prohibiting no-longer-authorized torture techniques) are far less substantial than Obama officials purport.  None of Goldsmith's analysis is grounded in the proposition that Obama hasn't yet acted to change Bush policies, thus rendering a nonsequitur the response that "Obama needs more time; it's only been 4 months."  Goldsmith is describing affirmative steps Obama has already announced to adopt the core Bush "terrorism" policies.

Just consider some of Goldsmith's examples:  Obama makes a melodramatic showing of ordering Guantanamo closed but then re-creates its systematic denial of detainee rights in Bagram, and "[l]ast month Secretary of Defense Gates hinted that up to 100 suspected terrorists would be detained without trial."  Obama announces that all interrogations must comply with the Army Field Manual but then has his CIA Director announce that he will seek greater interrogation authority whenever it is needed and convenes a task force to determine which enhanced interrogation methods beyond the Field Manual should be authorized.  He railed against Bush's Guantanamo military commissions but then preserved them with changes that are plainly cosmetic.

Obama has been at least as aggressive as Bush was in asserting radical secrecy doctrines in order to prevent courts from ruling on illegal torture and spying programs and to block victims from having a day in court.  He has continued and even "ramped up" so-called "targeted killings" in Pakistan and Afghanistan which, as Goldsmith puts it, "have predictably caused more collateral damage to innocent civilians."  He has maintained not only Bush's rendition policy but also the standard used to determine to which countries a suspect can be rendered, and has kept Bush's domestic surveillance policies in place and unchanged.  Most of all, he has emphatically endorsed the Bush/Cheney paradigm that we are engaged in a "war" against Terrorists -- with all of the accompanying presidential "war powers" -- rather than the law enforcement challenge that John Kerry, among others, advocated.

Glenn argues that by framing opposition to the Bush policies as now only coming from the far liberal left, and with the diehard Obama supporters still finding ways to agree with what he is doing, the Bush policies  - that translates to the Bush policies being in the middle and Obama now being there, too.