BUT THE WHALE HAD TO BE GOT:

Barack Obama ‘destroys first year in office’ (Christina Lamb, 2/28/10, Sunday Times of London)
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WHEN President Barack Obama took office last year he was compared to Superman, even joking at a dinner that he had been “born on Krypton and sent here ... to save the planet Earth”. Last January he appeared on the cover of Spider-Man.

Now, with his ambitious legislative agenda in tatters, the once invincible president has moved from comic-strip hero to comparisons to one of the great flawed figures of American literature. [...]

“I think choosing to take a Captain Ahab-like approach to healthcare — I’m going to push for this even in the worst downturn since the Great Depression — is roughly comparable to Bush’s decision to go to war [in Iraq],” Cook told Politico. “It basically destroyed the first year of a presidency.”