It's the Ideology, Not the Man

President Obama's cousin, Dr. Milton Wolf, pens an interesting op-ed in which he argues that liberals' growing displeasure with the President was predictable and as absurd as their earlier deification of him.

As the liberal presidency of Mr. Obama becomes increasingly indefensible, the liberal is faced with an unthinkable dilemma: acknowledge the fundamental failure of his collectivist liberal philosophy, which tends toward socialism, or blame its failures on a single man whom, until just recently, the liberal deified.

Liberals aren't ready to face that dilemma yet ... they're still in 'defend-the-deity-and-blame-others' mode ... but they are getting closer.
Under the headline, Destroying Democratic Presidents, Joan Walsh at Salon.com laments what she sees as the demonization of Presidents Clinton and Obama as men, not as policymakers. After describing Mr. Obama unflatteringly as "conciliator in chief" who "quickly retreated" and has been "rebuffed and humiliated," Walsh closes with:

Norquist and friends did their best [to demonize] Clinton; they've succeeded with Obama...

Juxtaposed against Walsh's article is a veritable shrine to the sitting president: 15 of the 16 books, speeches and articles listed under Salon.com's "Recommended Reads" are either Obama's own or others' glowing tributes to him.

It will be crushingly painful for liberals when their idol falls from grace, made even worse by the fact that, as the president's cousin points out, the cause of the fall is their ideology more than their man:

The absurdity of liberals' deification and then condemnation of their own leaders is second only to their unwillingness to confront the failures of their collectivist philosophy.

In the end, Barack Obama's failures as president are not because he couldn't faithfully execute the liberal collectivist philosophy - he ushered in the Obamacare era, after all - his failures are instead because he bought into the failed philosophy in the first place.