Grow A Pair

Awesomely put, by Wizbang:

It's become almost a competition within the Obama White House: who cam come up with the best way to blame a problem on the preceding administration. The variations on the theme have become cliche's so quickly:

"We have to clean up this mess..."

"We inherited this mess..."

"This was here when we walked in the door.."

"We have to overcome eight years of..."

"Our predecessors left us a worse mess than we thought..."

"This is a result of eight years of..."

And it's getting tiresome.

Hey, Mr. Obama, you're so damned smart, how come you didn't know any of this when you were running for office? Back then, you had all the solutions if we just trusted you.

You were going to reverse all our failures. Solve all our problems. Bring an end to bitter partisanship. Improve our standing in the world.

But now that you're actually expected to keep those promises, all of a sudden things are far more complicated and involved and challenging and generally worse than you thought.

But not worse than you told us. You made it abundantly clear just how badly eight years of Bush-Cheney had screwed us. It was a hell of a mess, but you were ready to clean it up. To coin a phrase, it was a shovel-ready project, and you had the shovel.

Instead, you've given us a steady stream of excuses and rationales and finger-pointing and more partisan rhetoric.

And how about those promises? "Closing the door to lobbyists." Except the couple of dozen you've appointed to powerful offices. "Closing Guantanamo within a year." Still open. "No tax hikes on people making less than $250,000." Whoops. "Unemployment won't go above 9 percent." That depends on how you define "percent," and if you're still operating on a Base 10 number system. "The most ethical administration ever." Unless you count things like paying your taxes.

Sheesh, you're acting like a guy who's never had a position of leadership or responsibility before, never really been held accountable for anything, never had to meet a payroll or be the boss.

Oh, that's right, you are.

If only someone had pointed that out when you were running for president.

Oh, that's right, a lot of us did.

But you won anyway. You're the president now. You wanted the office, you said you could handle it, you said you could do the job.

Start doing it.

If you can't grow a pair, then, sir, then at least act like it. Fake it if you must.

A lot of people start out faking it, then later discover that they actually can do the job. Give it a whirl.

And retire the "it's not my fault, it's the fault of the guy who had the job before" crap. Nobody forced you to take the job. Hell, there were a lot of other applicants for the job, and you told us all that you were better qualified and would do a better job than any of them.

And, for god's sake, even after the Massachusetts election, you STILL have a bigger majority in Congress than your predecessor ever enjoyed. Hell, in his last two years, your party held both Houses and you're STILL blaming him for everything.

You said you were ready "from day one" to be president. We're closing in on Day 400.

Start proving it.