KRAUTHAMMER

Posted at 9:03 a.m. ET

Charles Krauthammer declares that, for Obama, the bloom is off the rose, or she glisten off the ivy, or whatever:

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."
-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared, "We have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

And now, with the secretary of labor-designate in some tax trouble, we wonder if that new rule will be waived.

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war...

...It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus...

And yet the president defends it.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington.

And yet all the self-righteous on the political left are defending it.

Finally:

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal...

...I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

And we haven't even begun with foreign policy.  Wait for the first crisis.  If the president trips, he'll be Cartered.

February 6, 2009.