Obama Nine Months In. Triumph or Failure?

Living through these first months of the Obama administration has been like watching a movie that promised much only to find it has a plot line that unwinds way too slowly.

We're an hour or so in and still we have to reserve judgment. So how much longer can we sit in our seats waiting for this movie to 'cut to the chase' before we give up and walk out? This is like sitting down to watch the director's cut of Debbie Does Dallas only to find that the director in question is Ingmar Bergman. I want to support Obama, I want to 'believe'... but where's the f**ing money shot?

So far, we've had virtually no campaign planks nailed down: The Iraq and Afghanistan disasters still chug on, the economy is still at the mercy of the same unregulated free-marketeers who f***ed us to begin with and, the biggest plot hole of all, Obama has gone from expressing enthusiasm for a single payer healthcare system to a guy who now seems happy to let everything slide.

So far, all we've seen are healthcare measures that would do nothing except force us to buy the same overpriced and unregulated insurance on pain of jail time. Gee, thanks guys. The travesty coming out of Baucus' committee is the kind of corporatist BJ not even the most hardline Republicans could have dreamed of... So where's that guy who spoke so inspiringly of change? Is this what we voted for?

Now the cliffhanger is: will Obama swoop in heroically at the end of the deliberative process and make it all OK? Or will he let this miserable legislation through, thus guaranteeing a Democratic rout in 2010 and making even us liberals yearn wistfully for the good old days of George W. Bush? After all, with Bush, you knew you were going to be screwed. There were no surprises and fewer disappointments... unlike now when the potential for government to disappoint has never been bigger.

For now, I'll sit back down, take another handful of popcorn and wait for the movie to pick up the pace. WTF else can we do?