Many Obama supporters decry what they view as unfair criticism by conservatives this early in his Administration. He has only been in office for little over 60 days, give him a chance they plead.

If the criticism of Obama is unduly harsh, as many of his supporters claim, it is only because the standards established by his followers, and against which he should ultimately be judged, have been so unrealistically high. It was Obama's supporters, who, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary, falsely hailed him as not merely a candidate for the presidency, but as a transcendent figure, post-racial, post-partisan, with remarkable qualities to unite us and heal the nation. They placed him on a marble pedestal replete with all the splendor reserved for Greek Gods. And all this was based upon what? That he enraptured an audience with his soaring speeches?

Throughout the campaign, Obama himself chose not to disabuse his adoring fans in the media of his seemingly immortal powers. He basked in the adulation. The culmination of all this giddy nonsense was his speech in Berlin — an exercise in solipsism for which he was mercilessly and justifiably mocked. Although he toned down the rhetoric thereafter, the central premise of his candidacy remained intact: Barack Obama was an extraordinary politician capable of great things.

Not content that the object of their affections won the election, the mythologizing and hyperbole propounded by Obama's obedient servants in the media continued anew. Before he had served one day in the Oval Office, the comparisons to Lincoln were proffered. What was the factual basis for this speculative and unwarranted assertion? An examination of his actual political background and limited experience? No rational justification was offered in support of this preposterous thesis.

As I noted in a previous column, when you start out your term from the heights of Mt. Olympus, there is only one way to go — down. In their quest to help nominate the country's first African-American president, the media propped up Obama to be something that he was not. It is not the fault of his detractors that Obama now flounders, his reach exceeding his grasp.

Now that he occupies the Oval Office, the contrast or contradictions between Obama the candidate and Obama the President are as stark as they are numerous: Obama, the great speaker, incapable of performing the most basic of executive ministrations without the aid of his TelePrompter; Obama as the post-partisan politician, outsources the drafting of one of the most important pieces of fiscal legislation in our history to his party's left-wing congressional delegation with predictable results: the instrument is chock-full of liberal pork and garners not a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives.

What is transpiring during the early stages of the Obama Administration is a phenomenon unprecedented and unique in American political history: due diligence is being applied now to a president that should have occurred while he was a candidate during the campaign. Like a Popsicle in the hot Florida sun, the Obama facade, no longer buttressed by the incessant adulation of the campaign, has wilted rather quickly under the rigors of the presidency. Although the deconstruction of the myth of Obama may be disconcerting and disquieting to his supporters, it was inevitable.

It is Obama himself who is largely responsible for his rapid fall from grace. Obama as wordsmith, as silver-tongued orator, no longer seems able to captivate audiences when he speaks or proclaims, but rather, swells the ranks of skeptics. His words are subject to a scrutiny that was wholly absent from the campaign, and what the scrutiny has revealed about Obama is that he now, as president, has a rather large credibility problem.

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Houston Examiner