WASHINGTON, D.C., Aug. 10, 2011 (DPI) — Liberal columnists and publications are pummeling Barack Obama with a fury not seen since the days of George W. Bush.

Virtually all accuse Obama of detached and ineffective leadership, at a time when the markets are gyrating wildly and global economic fears worsen.  “Faced with a country keening for reassurance and reinvention, Obama seems at a loss,” Dowd wrote in The New York Times this week. “Many of his Democratic supporters here … are disillusioned.” A widely circulated column by a Der Spiegel correspondent began with the headline: ” How Obama Disappointed The World.”

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,779043,00.html

Responses on NYTimes.com to Dowd’s column were mostly laden with criticism and disappointment of the president. A few, though, stood up for him. “It is time,” one wrote (#87, 133 recommendations), “for a little defense of the President. Obama was elected as a post-partisan, post-racial, post-culture wars president — and that is what a majority of the American people wanted. That is also exactly who Obama is. We got what we voted for.

“What he (and we) did not expect was that a significant minority would reject him totally, on partisan, racial, and culture grounds, and find him ‘illigitimate.’ Hence, the accusations of his being a big spender, of being born in Kenya, and of being a socialist. Hence, the refusal of the GOP to participate at all in the health care bill (and, in retrospect, it was more important for Obama to go after jobs first). Hence, the canard of ‘death panels’ of 2010, that resulted, through the election of the Tea Party, the paralysis of our political process in 2011.

“Yes, Obama should have adopted, and he still has time to do so. We can imagine how President Clinton would have handled the situation, and I am sure, for example, that she would have not let the Congress run amok. But can we also imagine what we would be facing if the McCain/Palin ticket had prevailed. And now we have to think what a President Bachman, a President Perry, or even a President Romney would mean to the country in 2012.  Sometimes you have to go with the President you have, rather than the President you would like to have.”

Added another (#33, 230 recommendations as of 5pm 8/10) : “These columns about personality are getting a bit tired. Great presidents win wars and presidents usually get credit or blame for things beyond their power. Given the state of the economy, I doubt there has ever been a president who would win Dowd’s approval as she echos the discontent of a country unable to come to terms with the symptoms of it’s own mindless excess. Our country is held under the reckless power of short term corporate interests that will prevent any adequate restructuring of our economic system- be it health care or bank regulation. Don’t blame poor Obama, who’s probably as competent a president as we’ve had in my life time.