Barack Obama has been apologizing since his election.
He apologized for asking Tom Daschle to join his cabinet, a man who, it turned out, failed to pay his taxes. He apologized for making a few lowbrow comments about the Special Olympics on "The Tonight Show" with Jay Leno. He asked for America's forgiveness when intelligence mistakes resulted in the failed "underwear bomber" terrorist attacks. In an interview on ABC last week he even stated, "I don't think there's been an interview in which I didn't talk about some mistakes."
It's refreshing when a politician can take responsibility for his shortcomings. The kind of honesty he is espousing is a surreal correlative to the "I am not a crook" and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"-isms Americans all but expect from those we choose to lead us.
Except when it comes to actual things he promised that have not come to fruition.
True, the delay of the closing of Guantanamo and health care reform's missed self-instated deadline can be overlooked with a smidgen of self-aware abashment.
But when campaign Obama states over and over that health care negotiations will not be held in an underground bunker far away from media coverage and President Obama denies C-SPAN access, the honesty act is not what his constituents are looking for.
This is not an isolated incident.
Since being elected, Obama has been more silent than Milton Waddams' pitiable crusade for his stapler in the movie "Office Space" on a number of key policy promises, like his proposed windfall profits tax on big oil companies.
It would be very presumptuous to argue that these inconsistencies are why the president's poll numbers have been dropping or the reason for Scott Brown's Massachusetts senatorial victory.
Of course, liberals will tell you this is the very reason for these events while conservatives will argue it's a tangible indication of a public fed up with Obama's Muslim-inspired Marxist policies.
It should be pretty clear to anyone who wants to look at these instances rationally that it's a combination of disappointment on both sides, and if the president would like to see these things rationally, he should realize he cannot assuage people of two completely different political ideologies and shouldn't try.
Last week, during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day ceremony, Obama admitted to a Washington, D.C., church congregation the contents of his layered character and how the criticism he faces affects him: "There are times when the words that are spoken about me hurt. There are times when the barbs sting."
Is there a point to this kind of honesty? The people who supported his presidency and donated a record amount of funding to his campaign didn't ask for emotions. We have Dashboard Confessional and the Lifetime Network for our outlets of vicarious sympathy. America needs a President who will put his head down and do the job he told us he would do.
It is true that Obama's detractors will do anything possible to cut his throat. People like Rush Limbaugh can turn anything into a politicized event and do so in front of millions of listeners and viewers. Limbaugh, for instance, after the earthquake in Haiti two weeks ago, urged his radio listeners not to donate to relief efforts and claimed the catastrophe would "play right into Obama's hands ... it's made to order for him."
This sort of thing happens every day. I wouldn't be able to take that kind of criticism either. However, I don't lead a nation of 300 million people.
There are so many people who don't care what the president does and will do whatever they can to destroy him. It's called a democracy.
As we have seen a year into his presidency, some believe in the deepest chambers of their hearts that Obama is a Muslim and convince themselves in a way that's almost laudatory.
No matter how much pork Obama allows into his bills, they still believe he must pray toward Mecca five times a day.
You can't please everyone.
So Mr. President, when you go on air tomorrow night in the House of Representatives' chamber, go knowing that we have been watching you and expect to hear what you are going to do to produce what you promised.
That is, of course, unless we missed "Lost" and had to TiVo it.
