Compared to what Lincoln faced in 1861, or Roosevelt in late 1941, or Truman in 1950, or, yes, Bush in 2001, Obama's challenges are relatively modest. Government is not working because Obama subverted entire cabinet agencies and federal bureaucracies — from Homeland Security to NASA to Justice — to make them tools of larger efforts to advance the Obama multicultural therapeutic message rather than to honor and keep faith with their traditional agendas.

When the president uses emphatics like "really" or "actually" or "make no mistake about it," "let me be clear," "in point of fact" or "this is unacceptable," we know that what follows will be untrue and others will be blamed for the president's own self-induced blunders.

– Victor Davis Hanson