Wednesday, June 22, 2011

President Obama's Rough Week

It is only Wednesday, but Obama is already having a really bad week. The President is being pilloried by both the Right and the Left flanks. Ambassador Jon Huntsman's announcement that he is running for President realizes an eventuality that the Obama team didn't want to see happen. The House Republicans are mounting a challenge on his Libya mission. Congressman Dennis Kucinich, from crucial Ohio, attracted 87 Republican votes for his failed June 3 resolution to end U.S. support for the mission. He is going to try again.

 More bad new from the left. Al Gore is attacking the president's environmental record in Rolling Stone. We can probably expect more of that as Gore is the founder of the anti-corporate, left-of-center, newly revamped Current TV. Still this has got to hurt. President Obama deeply respects Gore, even journeying to Tennessee out of respect in 2008 to make sure the former Vice President wasn't running.

Tonight the President will deliver an address -- about 10 minutes -- on the drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan. His announcement that 10,000 troops will be coming home by year's end will probably be met once again with attacks on the right and the left to bring all the troops home. A new poll for The Hill found that the overwhelming majority -- 72% of those polled -- believe that the American military is involved in too many places.

That number goes a long way in explaining why the Republican leaders in the House are moving so swiftly to address the president's authority in Libya.

And its only Wednesday.

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