Anne Penketh: President battered by deluge of insults

The knives were out for President Barack Obama even before the last votes were counted in the mid-term elections.

Aloof, out of touch, arrogant, vain were just some of the adjectives being hurled at the Democratic President during the election night television coverage.

Charles Krauthammer, a right-wing columnist with the Washington Post, accused the White House of "condescension" and predicted that Obama would show "humility" at a post-election press conference scheduled for this morning.

As the electoral post mortem begins amid a "bonfire of the vanities", the Democratic leadership will be searching for scapegoats. During the campaign, Vice-President Joe Biden told the Democratic base to "stop whining".

But it seemed churlish and defeatist for him to blame the disappointed left who had simply pointed out that the Administration's achievements failed to match the soaring rhetoric of the election campaign.

The other major culprit targeted by the Democratic campaign was President George W. Bush, who was in power when the recession hit and who committed the country to war. The problem with that argument is that the Obama Administration has been in power for two years.

Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker, in saying that the vote was a referendum on the Obama agenda, acknowledged that voters were angry with the bankers and Bush for the economic crisis which remains their number one concern.

But Obama "comes forward with a series of proposals which the public hates", she said on CNN, referring to healthcare reforms and the stimulus package blamed for deepening the public debt.

According to a CNN opinion poll, three out of four Americans think things are going badly. Americans are not confident that the Republicans can cure the malaise, but they voted for them nevertheless.

It seems likely that Obama himself will be prepared to take some of the blame. He committed some missteps during the campaign: most recently, expressing disappointment with Hispanic voters who did not intend to vote.

He said they should have taken the position "We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us". He then had to back-pedal, saying that he should have referred to "opponents" rather than enemies.

Obama's former nemesis, points out refreshingly that he is probably "envious" that she is away in Asia while he suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said loyally that "the President inherited a very difficult set of problems and has been persistent and visionary in addressing them".

Two years ago, amid all the Obama hype, the President could practically walk on water. Now he cuts a lonely figure, deserted by his exhausted aides, and his hair has turned grey.

His religion and birthplace are the object of cranky speculation.

According to the resurgent Tea Party whose members will soon be respectable Congressmen and women, he is a Communist plant in the White House, bent on ramming a European lifestyle down the throats of Americans - which in this country is not a compliment.

Last month, the presidential seal dropped from the lectern as he was about to address a women's conference.

He recovered quickly, saying: "you all know who I am." Now, he has suffered the ultimate indignity by being called "dude" by the TV satirist Jon Stewart. Even worse, Obama has said that he did not mind.

Things might look grim, but the President need not despair. His approval rating may have hovered below 50 per cent since the northern spring, but it is no worse than that of three recent Presidents - Bill Clinton (43 per cent), Ronald Reagan (46 per cent), and Jimmy Carter (48 per cent) - before mid-term elections. Of the three, only Jimmy Carter was a one-term president.