This attempt by some liberal “journalists” to lower expectations for their Lord’s First Holy Term is a real howler, start to finish:

White House reporters for The New York Times predict that the market collapse will force President-elect Barack Obama to abandon for now many of his campaign promises.

If his stimulus plan “doesn’t work out, he may very well be a one-term president,” said Jeff Zeleny, who covered Obama’s campaign. “It’s hard to imagine that he could be reelected if the economy’s in the exact same position four years from now.”

It’ll be worse — precisely because of Obama and his Demsciples’ socialist programs, which have failed every time they’ve been tried. And are going to fail again, at everything except their real purpose.

“A lot of the things he said on the campaign trail you can now dispense with,” said correspondent Peter Baker. “For the moment he has to focus on the economy.”

Baker suggested Obama would tackle smaller-scale issues related to his major agenda items as a kind of political “down payment” on his promises, for now would retreat from even some of his firmest pledges.

“You’re not going to see universal health care, I don’t think, this year,” Baker said. “You’re not going to see a cap on carbon emissions, as he has promised, probably, this year.”

Odd, that; if they’re such wonderful proposals, why wouldn’t he want to implement them right away, to save us all from ourselves at last? This would seem to be a left-handed admission that going ahead and saddling up such hard-ridden liberal hobbyhorses will — *gasp!* — damage the economy. That couldn’t possibly be right, could it? After all these years of our having been so pedantically told by these same propagandists that the tired old shibboleths are just what we need?

“He hasn’t asked anybody for sacrifice,” Baker said. “His whole economic package is about giving things to people.”

Okay, the only appropriate response to this is to borrow Lileks’ Perry head and his chastening stare:

You sure about that, bub? You really, really sure?

Despite their downbeat assessment of Obama’s first-year prospects, the Times trio also described Obama as a fast learner who quickly adapted to the political challenges of a presidential campaign — and who could show similar adaptability in office.

“More than any other politician, he sort of grew, month by month, as you saw him,” Zeleny said, adding that when he was sworn into the Senate just four years ago, Obama hadn’t given much thought to running for president.

He didn’t grow; he was inflated, by you. Yes, there’s a difference, at least when it comes to something other than balloons — most particularly hack machine politicians who Would Be King.

“If Obama succeeds, it’s like Eisenhower after Truman,” Baker said, pointing out that Eisenhower perpetuated many of Truman’s anticommunist policies, winning over a public that had been resistant to his predecessor’s ideas.

“They think that Obama is not going to change things as dramatically” as people think, he said.

He’ll do whatever he’s told by the swinish Leftists who’ve been behind his Ascension all along.

“When the current president was elected, one of the first things he did was sit down with The New York Times and a battery of reporters,” Berke said.

Which was not only his first big mistake, but a singularly bad omen of the hapless RINO folly to come. And I let this one go by before, but: the narcissistic bastard “hadn’t given much thought to running for president?” Back over to you, Perry.