In general I have a good deal of trouble watching the news; the MSM has proven itself utterly unreliable, sneering from the view of their colons, ranging from the suiplenitudinous Katie Couric to the loopy Dan Rather. And then there is Chris Matthews, with the tingle in his leg over His O'liness, and of course Keith Olbermann, whose friends really ought to start him on an Ativan drip and make sure he has a medical power of attorney.

And round-table discussions between journalists have been described as a circle-jerk. Inelegant but true, and it's vexing to hear various journalists jockeying for face time to relieve themselves of the thoughts they had over, or received from, their Alpha-Bits.

The only reason to watch Fox News, really, and they're the best of the lot, is Charles Krauthammer. A man who has overcome tremendous difficulties, he's far and away the most intelligent commentator in front of the camera and his mind is the most acute, homing in on the essentials. I suspect he's had a philosophical journey since he wrote speeches for Walter Mondale in 1980. I'm very glad he's speaking, and writing now.

Here Krauthammer eviscerates the man, the legend, the myth of Obama.

Obama is turning out to be a frail reed. Highly intelligent but untested, and unworldly in a particularly leftist way. I don't think it's an accident that so many divines are leftists for their eyes are not fixed on their path but on their wishes for reality. Obama, with his charm and his elegance, has schmoozed his way through his life, aided to no small degree by his looks and by being a black who is not angry and threatening and is therefore the ideal of a certain sort of guilty voter who finds thinking more bothersome than feeling good. I myself, no liberal, wanted a lot from him because I wanted a black to do well as long as I didn't do badly from it. Or even too badly for I'd have borne some difficulties just to prove that in America a black can make it.

But try as I might I couldn't swallow his past: democrats have traditionally gotten a pass for past crimes and misdemeanors but even Bill Clinton would have had trouble explaining Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright, and why he didn't pull back from those loathsome people. I knew then that he was a lightweight, insulated by arrogance and the lack of achievement from making choices, knowing that his soaring rhetoric will carry the day. He is finding out that good sounds are not enough now that he's in the big, the biggest, league.

What, really, has Obama done, except run his campaign? "Obama ain't run anything but his mouth," so allows Jesse Jackson. When I quote him the world is ending.

When challenged on what Obama has run, he responded with--running his campaign. I'm unclear on the definition of postmodern, but I think that this might qualify and it's not a compliment.

Obama has been sunk into the quagmire of Chicago politics, and I'm sure he knows that morass of venality and corruption. But there are bigger places than Chicago. No doubt not paying taxes in Chicago is not a big deal, but in less corrupt places it is and he simply didn't bring a team that considered that the backgrounds of his nominees might be checked. And the results have been horribly embarrassing for him and his large ego, of Clintonian size, doesn't like that one little bit. His friend simply are not ready for the big league.

To add to that, Obama entrusted Nancy Pelosi to write the stimulus bill. Matthew Continetti in The Weekly Standard gives us a fascinating article on how a Keynesian stimulus package could work; I'm not convinced of Keynes but I'm willing to think about it or at least about "investment" in worthwhile infrastructure, which this bill is light on. But the fact that Obama let that woman, that Nancy Pelosi, write it, tells me that he's scared and afraid and in way over his head, to let her present him with the Mother of All Pork Bills. The comfort of the campaign, which he ran brilliantly, is over. The parties are over. And now all the problems have descended on him, each howling for his attention and his suavity suddenly is a currency losing its value by the minute. It's put-up-or-shut-up time, and he punted. To that woman, that Nancy Pelosi.

Let's hope that Obama's ginormous ego will assert itself and he will not let that woman, that Nancy Pelosi, run him like a Rock-em, Sock-em Robot and hang what is probably the worst piece of legislation in the history of this country around his neck. Let's hope that he figures that his position in history depends on him regaining the momentum of his election. After all, as he reminded people, he did win the election. And now he needs to act like it instead of letting that woman, that Nancy Pelosi, pull his strings. He makes a rather pathetic Pinocchio to that woman's Giapetto. To think that this obviously intelligent man is being run by her... An earthy friend of mine in government said he's seen the signs in newbies to office: Obama is scared, er, shitless. Works for me.

At the end of his article, Krauthammer writes, "I thought the awakening [of the American people] would take six months. It took two and a half weeks." I hope he's right, but it seems that we have gone from the End of History, the 90s, through the day that we learned that everything changed, 9/11/2001, to the Cult of Personality of a man, an intelligent, untested, self-righteous lightweight, who was elected solely because he was charming. And black. And not George W. Bush.

(If you like Krauthammer's writing, he's an article I chanced on commenting on how furious Bill Clinton was when His O'liness remarked that Reagan had changed the world in a way that Bill Clinton had not. Anything that irritates Bill Clinton is fine by me for I suffered for eight years under him, giving me some sympathy for Hillary. And it's here.)