Since he debuted on the political stage with the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, Republicans have suspected that Barack Obama was a Marxist. It turns out they were right: He's Groucho.
In the 1930 film Animal Crackers, Groucho Marx, a comedic genius and wit, played Captain Jeffrey Spaulding. He sang a lyric called "Hello, I Must Be Going."
Hello, I must be going.
 I cannot stay, 
I came to say, 
I must be going.
 I'm glad I came
 but just the same, 
I must be going.
Through his brief career, our president has sung a similar tune. He has been for what he is against, too.
Obama was the candidate who supported "pay as you go budgeting." He is now the president who plans trillion-dollar a year deficits for the next decade. He spent a trillion dollars on health care and explained it was a strategy to save money. He deepened our commitment to war in Afghanistan while pledging to exit earlier. He supports American energy independence while limiting energy production. He has shunned earmarks while embracing 8,600 of them. In the same breath, he urges both costly economic stimulus and deficit reduction. He tells his party, "Democrats are not for a bigger government," as he prescribes a new federal pill for every ill.
Obama repeatedly said he did not want the government running the car industry -- as his government took over Chrysler and GM, fired the latter's CEO, and guaranteed their service contracts. He won election by attacking Hilary Clinton's plan to mandate health insurance coverage and John McCain's tax on Cadillac health plans. He was not long in office before he proposed both, himself. He slammed President Bush's tax cuts and the "tired and cynical philosophy," behind them. Then he extended those tax cuts. He said, "Lobbyists will not find a job in my White House," which was true, until they looked and did. And now, he confounds himself again as he confronts a president's most serious responsibility. Even as he sends Americans into harm's path, he is coming while going again.
In Libya, the president has embarked upon the war he says is not a war, announcing while getting in that our purpose is to get out. He says Gaddafi must go while the Chairman of his Joint Chiefs of Staff clarifies that is not our objective. This zigzagging serenade would impress even Captain Spaulding.
I've written before in these pages about the molten core of Barack Obama. He is not a false-hearted man. He is, however, an uncertain one. In his own eyes, as voiced in his poetic autobiography, Dreams From My Father, he is many men, the son of one race and also another. He is as much Harvard tea as Chicago grit. The dry dust of Kansas and the red soil of Kenya both mark his hands. But life has not yet hardened Obama to follow one star above all others. He remains a wanderer, a president in progress. With equal passion, his bright mind displays its capacity to defend and even adopt incompatible points of view. He has not yet learned that the man who defends everything defends nothing. And, eventually, becomes nothing. Obama remains unformed, an ever-changing president in pieces. Maturity has not yet found him. Our first black president is not yet an integrated man.
The original Groucho Marx enjoyed a decade of success hosting a game show called "You Bet Your Life." The new one, dangerously unknown, even to himself, is betting many lives, as well.
I'll stay a week or two, 
I'll stay the summer through,
 but I am telling you,
 I must be going.
Alex Castellanos is a Republican media consultant and a partner in the public affairs firm Purple Strategies.
I look forward to more.. good work.. you've made several excellent points
Now we have a Repunlican media consultant worried that Obama can't quickly correct many years of Republican screwups. If you don't like what happened to this nation, why did you sit idly by while the GOP created the mess?
Obama's failure to immediately clean up the mess created by the GOP is not his fault. The GOP is determined to obstruct any measures that may succeed. They fully remember that their policies kept them out the majority for 4 decades. They are determined to avoid repeating that fate by making sure that no executive can repair the damage they cause this nation which they then blame on the persons who failed to stop them from causing the damage.
It's amazing how these GOP talking heads can speak in stereo with a single mouth. They talk out of both sides, and yet their policies lead us to the worst financial crises we have had since the depression. I have seen what their policies do, and all I can say is no thanks.
It is Obama's desertion from his own stated political positions, so obvious to any casual follower, that caused the collapse of the grassroots Democratic movement during the 2010 political season, and left a wide opening for the emergence of fascism that we're now seeing in several states.
Because of Obama's abandoning of all of the things that he stood for, he's been a major failure.
Obama clearly does not fight. He has capitulated on major issues (public option; tax cuts; Gitmo, etc.)
Recently, he takes a number of vacations at the most inoppurtune times. His flight (um trip) to South America is a case in point.
The man does not fight. He does not have the backbone to fight the ongoing onslaught of corporate America. We pay taxes, but multinational corporations dont pay a dime? Are we serious? And now talk of a VAT tax? Listen, in 1904 we had a President who stared down corporate America and helped America become the world's preeminent nation. His name was Teddy Roosevelt- my favorite Republican President. Obama should either begin fighting for the working and middle class, or he should have the class to step aside and let the DEMS find a candidate who is NOT another corporate puppet. The Repubs should be thinking Teddy Roosevelt as well. The business is all good and regulation is all bad mantra is not going to work in this election.