President Bush was both loved and loathed for his resoluteness of purpose. But his successor has taken that trait to an entirely new level, to the point that he’s become obstinate in the face of a clear reality.

President Obama, his lieutenants and media allies claim that prevailing public anger is rooted in frustration over a Washington that’s “getting nothing done.” They are wrong. As I explain in my Human Events column today, most of the outrage is the result of a Washington that’s doing too much to push policies that have always failed.  Thank you.

Media elites and pointy-headed leftwing intellectuals are having spasms this morning over Sarah Palin. What set them off this time? A liberal blogger discovered that Gov. Palin had written some “cheat” notes on her hand to use during her speech at the Tea Party convention this weekend. Every commentator in the country is using the incident to denounce her as stupid, non-intellectual, un-presidential and unserious. By the way, the “reminders” on her palm were “Energy,” “Cut taxes” and “Lift America’s spirits.” Oh the horror!

Of course most of the media talking heads continue to think that Obama is just the smartest, coolest guy that has ever occupied the Oval Office. Most of them thought it was silly when we raised questions about why our Harvard-educated president couldn’t say “Good morning” without his co-president – the Teleprompter. And even with the teleprompter, Obama manages to display serious ignorance. In a speech last week, he told a story about a Navy corpsman apparently not realizing that the “p” and the “s” in “corpsman” are silent. Twice, with the teleprompter, Obama pronounced the word as “corpse man.” Now there’s a job I wouldn’t want.

The media and the Left desperately want America to think that only liberals are smart. I remember how Reagan was mocked unmercifully because he used note cards during his speeches. The media had nothing but contempt for Dan Quayle. And, of course, George W. Bush was constantly presented as a buffoon.

“Poor little stupid Sarah Palin,” they are all saying. She wrote “Energy” on her hand to remind herself to bring up the need for more drilling. She wrote “Cut taxes” because she believes that is how to get our economy moving. She wrote “Lift America’s spirit” because she knows America needs inspiration.

Our president doesn’t write notes on his palm. He “knows” that limiting drilling is a great idea while we grow more dependent on people who hate us. He “knows” that raising taxes on families and small businesses is just the thing to do when the economy is on the ropes. And he is too busy apologizing for America’s sins and bashing businesses to think about lifting our spirits.

So who is the stupid one?

Playing Politics With The Stimulus

This one probably won’t surprise you. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University just issued a study showing where $157 billion in stimulus dollars went. In an unbelievable “coincidence,” the report found that Democratic congressional districts received 1.8 % more money than GOP districts. Democratic congressional districts averaged 152 awards, while GOP districts averaged only 94. Incredibly, the study found that unemployment levels and median income had no impact on whether or not an area received money.

Here’s the bottom line: The $787 billion legislation was not an economic stimulus bill, it was a Democrat stimulus bill. Money has been used to essentially reward those areas of the country that vote “the right way.” And not one investigative reporter was able to put two and two together to discover this misuse of your tax money.

Here are some reactions to Obama’s West Point speech that may surprise you.

“Reporters love a deadline — we’ll hound him over it. Just wait until next year. There will be flashy graphics on our screens saying, ‘Countdown to Drawdown.’” That might sound like sarcasm from Sean Hannity, but it actually came from CBS’s Kimberly Dozier.

“How do you on the one hand say: ‘We need to send these troops over there; it’s critical; this is in our national-security interest to do this.’ But then say: ‘But we’re only going to keep them there for 18 months; we’re going to start to withdraw them after 18 months’? I just don’t understand the logic of how that works. …This is not a football game, where the time runs out. To win this war, you have to defeat the enemy.” Glenn Beck? No, that was veteran CBS anchor Bob Schieffer.

Here’s one more: “Where’s the hope? … It sounds more Rube Goldberg than ‘Remember the Alamo.’ … If I were with the Taliban right now, I’d put a little Post-it up on that month in 2011, and say: ‘This is when we do OUR surge.’” Rush Limbaugh? Believe it or not, that was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews speaking Tuesday night, after he had thought more about the substance of Obama’s remarks.

If liberal media elites are starting to second-guess Obama, I suspect millions of Americans are too!

Here’s a news story that you probably didn’t hear about over the weekend. Some of Obama’s staunchest supporters are beginning to question his foreign policy. Former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE), a Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam War who endorsed Obama last year, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed Friday. He congratulated Obama on his Nobel Peace Prize but criticized his foreign policy for being too “naïve.” Kerrey also criticized Obama for “apologizing for America too much.”

Kerrey wrote, “[Obama] has made too many apologies. And at this point, his strategy is too naïve and has too little coherence to be called a strategy.” Kerrey even went so far as to praise George W. Bush on Iraq. He wrote, “Then, against all reasonable predictions, President Bush chose to increase rather than decrease our military commitment. The ‘surge,’ as it became known, worked. Victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat… Great American leaders of our past had ignored popular sentiment and pressed on during the darkest hours, even when setbacks give rhetorical ammunition to skeptics.”

Kerrey is respected in and around Washington for his foreign policy opinions. In fact, he is respected so much that he was placed in charge of the 9/11 commission. Normally, when a top supporter begins to criticize a president’s foreign policy, it is a lead story on the nightly news. But then again, the mainstream media would never want to insult this Administration.

ABC’s one hour infomercial with President Obama promoting his socialized healthcare plan was a ratings bomb for the network. Despite airing in primetime at 10 p.m. on Wednesday, the president attracted fewer than 5 million viewers. The show had the lowest ratings of all the major networks for that hour. It wasn’t as if the other networks aired their most popular shows either. NBC debuted a new show titled “The Philanthropist” and CBS aired a repeat episode of “CSI: NY.”

It appears the American people are getting sick of seeing Barack Obama everywhere. The argument the major news networks use when they receive complaints for giving Obama too much air time is that he is a ratings booster. That argument has lost credibility after Wednesday’s bomb. It is getting harder and harder for Big Media to disguise its true intentions, which is to promote a radical leftwing agenda to the American people. But evidently the American people aren’t that interested in the new ABC — the “All Barack Channel.”