Maureen Dowd Hits Obama: That Didn't Take Long!

The honeymoon appears to be drawing to a quick end for Barack Obama.

Most of us expected him to bask in the glow of media adoration for quite some time, but after the implosion of Tom Daschle, some in the press seem to have decided that it's time to put down the pompoms, at least, temporarily.

With cabinet picks dropping like flies -- and new mini-scandals popping up every day -- it appears they have finally hit a tipping point. They love Barack, but not as much as they love a good storyline (and their own credibility) -- so some are beginning to turn on him.

Case in point: Maureen Dowd's column this morning. Now, the snarky and cynical Dowd may not have been the most fervent cheerleader for Team Obama, though she certainly seemed generally pleased with him. However, the era of good feelings has flown out the window today, as Dowd blasted both the Daschle situation and the stimulus package.

On Daschle, she rightly noted that, "It took Daschle's resignation to shake the president out of his arrogant attitude that his charmed circle doesn't have to abide by the lofty standards he lectured the rest of us about for two years."

Then she turned her ire to what she called a "helter-skelter stimulus package", suggesting that the President rent the movie "Dave" to get an idea of how to handle the situation (If you haven't seen it, Dave brings in his personal accountant to slash the federal budget).

She even went so far as to note that Obama was reading to elementary school kids as the Daschle story broke, comparing it to Bush's reading of "The Pet Goat" on 9/11. "Even as he told the children his favorite superheroes were Batman and Spider-Man," she wrote, "his own dream of being the superhero who swoops in to swiftly save America was going SPLAT!"

Now, it doesn't particularly surprise me that Dowd is jumping on this story - it's exactly the type of thing she thrives on -- but it is stunning that these sort of columns are being written only 16 days into the new administration!

Obama, of course, was the most popular incoming President in years, and he had more than enough good will in the media to withstand a few speed bumps. Instead, he's on the defensive after less than a month. If I may steal Dowd's headline, "Well, That Certainly Didn't Take Long"..