Gail Collins, editorial page editor of The New York Times through most of the George W. Bush presidency, gives us a progress report on his replacement:
[T]hings have been looking pretty good. American influence is rising abroad, and at home nobody in the White House appears to be plotting to undermine our civil rights on a daily basis.
The economy's looking kind of stimulated. These things take time, but the "cash for clunkers" part of the plan seems to be working like a charm. […]
True, there's no health care bill yet, and members of Congress are getting yelled at about socialized medicine by people who appear to have been sitting in their attics since the anti-tax tea parties, listening for signs of alien aircraft. But on the bright side, they've finally got something to distract them from the president's birth certificate.
Nick Gillespie and I issued a slightly different report card last month. Michael Moynihan wrote about the limits of overseas popularity yesterday. I wrote about the birthers' usefulness to president-loving pundits two weeks ago. And for those laboring under the fantasy that Obama's America is a bubble bath of civil liberties, I would recommend starting with the archive of one of the few columnists in America who consistently cares about such things regardless of which team is in the White House: Jacob Sullum.
