Changed

Three weeks into the Obama Presidency, it seems like both the Right and the Left are having difficulty accepting just how successful the new President has been. He's implemented a number of smaller but significant campaign promise initiatives, especially with child health insurance, but mainly:

"In terms of what I've learned on the politics of it," he said, "I think what I've learned is that I've got a great team because we moved a very big piece of legislation through Congress in record time."

His bragging rights were easily justified. You'd have to go back to Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s or Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s to find a more sweeping, more expensive and more quickly enacted package of what Republicans call "new spending" and Democrats call "new investments."

"And that was not easy to do."

The Republicans are absolutely clueless on how to combat Obama, because they have no ideas of their own. Compare yet another evolution in John McCain's simmering attempt to suppress his rage of entitlement:



With how our President has moved on and is addressing the entire NBA All-Star audience to promote helping each other through these tough times:



McCain comes off as America's Biggest Crank, and the GOP think the answer is to position Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who has so often come off as dimwitted in cable news appearances, as the new Newt Gingrich -- you know, the House Speaker who kept universal healthcare from happening, now all these years.

Andrew Sullivan has a more-accurate-than-not take on those Dems who groused these past few weeks:

The Democrats and the liberal base have responded to all this with a mixture of cynicism and their own partisanship. They rolled their eyes at Obama’s outreach to Republicans; they hated the inclusion of the other party in the cabinet and had to swallow hard not to complain about the postpartisan rhetoric. Their cynicism is well earned. But my bet is that Obama also understands that this is, in the end, the sweet spot for him. He has successfully branded himself by a series of conciliatory gestures as the man eager to reach out. If this is spurned, he can repeat the gesture until the public finds his opponents seriously off-key.

I don't care or not if Obama elicits bipartisan support, as long as he doesn't compromise on core principles of whatever he's trying to pass. But what I did vote for was a strategist. That, and his ideas -- which he is, like any successful community organizer, putting into action.

And which is ultimately where the GOP finds itself bankrupt like a bank in 2009.