I cannot help but wonder, as I watch our new President careening around the globe making endless apologies for America's actions while expressing relief that no one is blaming him personally, passively accepting insults from tinhorn dictators, committing social gaffes with both visiting heads of state and while abroad, and ignoring nuclear challenges from the likes of Iran and North Korea, if anyone who voted for this man is perhaps having second thoughts.

Employing an "apocalyptic style", he has bombarded us with crisis after crisis (which his Chief of Staff has reminded us are opportunities that "should never be wasted"), tripled the National Debt, broken a campaign pledge to deny the appointment of lobbyists to his administration (to the tune of over two dozen "waivers"), appointed a notorious tax cheat as Secretary of the Treasury (and titular head of the IRS), apparently has problems finding any capable nominees for top government positions who are free from tax evasion issues, and has begun an unprecedented attempt to install government dominance over the free market.

Despite his eagerness to castigate his predecessor at every opportunity, he has maintained many of the prior administration's policies on issues including the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, homeland security and the economy.

Obama is still immersed in peripatetic campaigning while his lack of sagacity and experience becomes more apparent on a daily basis.

These are troubling times for America, requiring calm, ethical, intelligent leadership and the ability to perceive and implement policies designed to stabilize our economy, maintain our position as a world leader and meet the challenges of those who would hasten our decline.

Instead, we have an ideologue whose utopian visions were influenced by the radical left throughout his privileged youth and buttressed by his lack of connection with the "real economy", since he has received paychecks from either government or nonprofit entities throughout his working life.

An FDR-style statist with grand ambitions to alter the American political landscape, Obama appears more in tune with his personal agenda than with meeting the current urgent needs of this country.

It has not taken long for him to unveil his vision of an American socialism that "will mirror Europe's ennui - a landscape of bored, trapped worker bees beholden to the machinations of the almighty state, their daily concerns epitomized by the fear that someone else may unjustly and capriciously become the recipient of some tiny, incremental benefit denied themselves" (Victor Davis Hanson).

Obama is clearly enthralled with centralized executive authority, intent on providing government with the opportunity to play a major role in the direction of the economy both through the leverage created by government funding of the automotive and financial sectors and, more indirectly, through increased centralized planning of the economy in general.

He is fawningly aided and abetted by an adoring media, who is so deeply committed to his success that they have become willing foot-soldiers in the "Ministry of Truth".

Is this the information that convinced enough voters to elect Obama to the Presidency?

As both Aristophanes and Alexis deTocqueville both warned, a poorly informed, "half-educated, or not infrequently illiterate electorate at the polls, voting for instantaneous entitlement" can be a dangerous thing indeed.

We shall see.

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