This analysis by New York’s John Heilemann gets funnier every time I read it:
It’s crashingly clear that his honeymoon is (already!) over.
The quick end of that sweet and blissful interval comes as something of a shock. There were five good reasons to expect that Obama’s runway would be longer and less littered with obstructions than usual. The first was the smoothness of his transition and the superstar-laden lineup he installed. The second was the scale of the economic and financial crisis that confronts the country, which would seem to have raised the political cost of rank obstructionism. The third was the consensus from left to right that supersize action was required. The fourth was the magnitude of Obama’s electoral victory and the mandate it ostensibly bestowed. And fifth were his skills as a communicator, which even his staunchest foes were apt to compare to Ronald Reagan’s.
That these five factors have produced something less than a nirvana-like political environment can be blamed on an array of villains.
“Superstar-laden lineup”? Are those five reasons really so “good”? His Majesty’s courtiers are beginning to notice that the Emperor doesn’t seem as clothed as he was a couple of weeks ago, but figure that “an array of villains” cunningly caused the coronation robes to dissolve.