I’m not one who generally likes to pile on, but I’m beginning to get the urge. Like many who feel we got stiffed after asking for our change, I would like some accountability. One of the reasons I don’t wish to pile on is that, even though I’ve never done the job personally, I imagine it’s a lot harder to do well than it looks. And the level of intractibility that has been shown by the opposition these last two and a half years surpasses anything that any President has had to face this side of Abraham Lincoln. One should also make allowances for the situation in which the new President found himself: two wars and a global economic meltdown in full swing.

As I am not one to pile on, neither am I one to suggest that the Dems run someone else to ‘shake Obama up’. Yes, in hindsight, there are a lot of decisions that could have been made differently. However, that doesn’t mean that we throw the baby out with the bath water. All a second candidate will shake up is the Democratic Party. We’ve seen what a fractured party looks like, it’s called the GOP.

This does not mean that President Obama gets a free pass, however. He needs to get moving, and he needs to do so BEFORE the election. If he waits until his second term to enact the change he promised, that makes him no better than the people he sought to replace. That makes him just another political hack whose only goal is reelection.