It must be very hard to be Barack Obama. He's constantly being pressed for definitive answers, resolute plans, and swift follow-through. But rarely can he deliver on all three, as we've seen in the past year, and it's no fault of his own.

The political apparatus is forever getting clogged with Senatorial bickering, Supreme Court legislations, public dissent, and an endless list of other obstacles that make Obama the idealist look more like Obama the deceiver.

Take a look at how General Patraeus tries to move the goal posts set by the president just a few months ago, when he said that we would be out of Afghanistan by July of 2011. Again, I am sympathetic to Obama here: He may have had every reason to believe this would be possible when he set that date. If the date gets pushed back, which it surely will, I blame the junky machinery of Washington D.C. Unfortunately, it'll be Obama who ends up taking the blame.