We expected FDR and we got...

Did we not expect bold leadership that matched the rhetoric when we elected Barack Obama a little more than a year ago? Was it delusional to believe after the eight wrenching years of Bush, Cheney machiavellianism that the seemingly transformational figure of Barack Obama was somehow a gift that was bestowed upon us, that whether or not we deserved it, he could bring about the change he so eloquently displayed and which we so earnestly believed?

Sadly, it was not to be. Maybe it was never meant to be. Maybe we let ourselves want to believe he could lift us out of the morass that we had just endured. There were worrying signs even early on. The economic team he surrounded himself with, the talk of Iraq being the wrong war and Afghanistan being the war we neglected. Then the financial meltdown on Wall Street, the bailouts and the subsequent economic calamity that soon followed, all before he was elected. So daunting may not adequately describe what he was about to encounter.

Then the euphoria of inauguration day. It seems so long ago.

Reality, however has set in. The mandate has since been squandered. Health care reform with a single payer medicare for all option was never on the table. Even a less than robust public option has been eviserated to the point where only the big health insurance behemoths will continue to benefit. Sure there will be health insurance "reform", but in name only. Hijacked by big moneyed interests and their few select sycophants they bankroll on both sides of the aisle. All done while the White House and its primary occupant dithered, wanting bi partisanship with those whose only desire was intransigence, resistance and his defeat through any means. So much for the presidency as a bully pulpit.

Meanwhile unemployment soars officially over 10.2 percent but really over 17 percent when underemployment, part time work and those who have given up hope of finding a job are included. All this while the Wall Street recipients of the public's money plan to dole out billions in bonuses to the very folks who created the financial disaster and were never held accountable. When you surround yourself with a Summers and a Geitner and when your election campaign was the recipient of more funding from the big financial institutions than any other source, it should not come as a shock that Wall Street continues to benefit while Main Street continues to suffer.

Now with his speech tonight, officially announcing the expansion of the war in Afghanistan, the final shoe of this great unraveling will come to pass and with it any hope of salvaging his presidency. It is now his war. An inevitable failure that he alone could have avoided, but who chose military expediency over enlightened leadership. The latest installment of political failure and fear of the right wing attacks on being weak on defense. His fate, as was Lyndon Johnsons, is sealed with this decision.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future