Many of us have wondered how Barack Obama, a man with no legislative or executive accomplishments, possibly could have been elected president.

Of course, one reason he was elected is because the media covered his campaign … prodigiously … and more importantly, they covered for him. Media outlets, our precious fourth estate, blithely served as Obama’s enablers, apologists, and propaganda arm, enthusiastically cheering on the first African American to win a major party nomination, while all-but guaranteeing that he walked away with the general election victory.

The media … CREATED Barack Obama.

The Washington Post ombudsman found that Obama received three times the coverage as Hillary Clinton or John McCain, and the vast majority of Obama coverage was POSITIVE. The Orwellian Journolist scandal later revealed that members of the mainstream news establishment actually brainstormed articles to boost Obama’s campaign, and to bring down Sarah Palin, after her monumental speech to the RNC.

But all of this cannot change the fact that now, Obama is becoming an embarrassment … The emperor truly has no clothes … and even the liberal press is starting to acknowledge it – albeit for different reasons than conservative critics. They think Obama is spineless — and not liberal enough. They are starting to jettison their beer-goggles and speak the unvarnished truth about the “unqualified” man whom they nearly single-handedly elected to the presidency.

Consider the following articles just this week:

What Happened to Obama (The New York Times Sunday Review – Aug. 6, 2011):

“[W]hen faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze.

Those were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” [inaccurately] paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

Past Time For a New Agenda (The New York Times – Aug. 9, 2011)

Where, though, is the broader vision? Mr. Obama said nothing about direct job creation. He did not mention that unemployment among high school graduates under 25 is averaging 21.5 percent. He said nothing about more help for homeowners who are under water, though easier refinancing rules would help many borrowers at little cost to taxpayers. He could vigorously support the Senate bill to reduce taxes on businesses by forgiving loans to states that replenish their unemployment funds.

The Most Powerful Man on Earth? (Washington Post -Aug. 8, 2011- Dana Millbank)

A familiar air of indecision preceded President Obama’s pep talk to the nation. … The first draft of his schedule for Monday contained no plans to comment on the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor’s. Then the White House announced that he would speak at 1 p.m. A second update changed that to 1:30. At 1:52, Obama walked into the State Dining Room to read his statement. Judging from the market reaction, he should have stuck with his original instinct.

“No matter what some agency may say, we’ve always been and always will be a AAA country,” Obama said, as if comforting a child who had been teased by the class bully.

When he began his speech (and as cable news channels displayed for viewers), the Dow Jones industrials stood at 11,035. As he talked, the average fell below 11,000 for the first time in nine months, en route to a 635-point drop for the day, the worst since the 2008 crash.

It’s not exactly fair to blame Obama for the rout: Almost certainly, the markets ignored him. And that’s the problem: The most powerful man in the world seems strangely powerless, and irresolute, as larger forces bring down the country and his presidency.

The economy crawls, the credit rating falls, the markets plunge, and a helicopter packed with U.S. special forces goes down in Afghanistan. Two thirds of Americans say the country is on the wrong track (and that was before the market swooned), Obama’s approval rating is 43 percent, and activists on his own side are calling him weak.

Yet Obama plods along, raising gobs of cash for his reelection bid — he was scheduled to speak at two DNC fundraisers Monday night — and varying little the words he reads from the teleprompter. He seemed detached even from those words Monday as he pivoted his head from side to side, proclaiming that “our problems is not confidence in our credit” and turning his bipartisan fiscal commission into a “biparticle.”

Madness, Crisis and Barack Obama (Daily Kos Aug. 8, 2011)

But the great complaint with Barack Obama isn’t so much about what he has done, as about the opportunity he has largely squandered. America stands at a precipice, at a time of great crisis. A time when bold, aggressive and determined leadership is called for. It is a time when America needs drama.

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As part of a California Assembly campaign I managed in the fall of last year, I conducted a couple of pro bono focus groups with Democratic-leaning moderates and independents. Prior to delving into my candidate’s own issues, I covered a range of national topics, including perceptions of Barack Obama and other leading figures such as Sarah Palin. In the course of the discussion of Sarah Palin, most respondents thought she was crazy and didn’t agree with her. But astonishingly at the time, a theme kept re-emerging: several voters in each group expressed a variation of the following sentiment, which I repeat here almost verbatim: “I voted for Obama. I think Sarah Palin is crazy, but I’d vote for her over Obama next time, because things need to change. Maybe a little bit of crazy is what we need right now.“

I will stand by my gut prediction. By 2012, Barack Obama will be old news, having lost the respect of his party activists and the media. Sarah Palin will be the new “it” candidate and her reformer’s march toward D.C. will be the number-one story of the next election cycle. Granted, members of the media still won’t vote for her … but they will be unable to resist covering her exciting and unconventional grassroots campaign. It might even send some tingles up a few legs.

And on a final note … to Daily Kos and its readers … If Sarah Palin is crazy, I don’t want to be sane. That being said … we’ll take all the votes we can get, even if they think “we need some crazy” in the White House.