They Love Him in Brussels

Obama is America's first black president? Well, yes. Sort of. But what he really is is the U.S.'s first European president--the reason they still adore him on the Continent. At home, though, his feet of clay are showing, and formerly besotted types are now less than enraptured. So while, as the Telegraph notes, White House visitor Sir Paul gushes (like a schoolgirl espying Justin Bieber), the only thing gushing in the U.S. at the moment is an out-of-control oil leak:

...McCartney's banalities were an example of a transatlantic dissonance that is all too apparent these days. Whereas Europe is stuck in November 2008 and still hopelessly in love with Obama, Americans have got over the historic symbolism of it all and are now moving on as they live with the reality.

That reality has now begun to dawn on some of Obama's natural constituency - Hollywood and the Left. The "no drama Obama" demeanour that served him so well on the campaign trail is now becoming a liability.

Bemoaning Obama's passivity after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the director Spike Lee thundered: "He's very calm, cool, collected. But, one time, go off! If there's any one time to go off, this is it, because this is a disaster."

This is the same Spike Lee who once described Obama's election as a "seismic" change that represented "a better day not only for the United States but for the world".

The ladies of The View, the liberal-dominated morning talk show moderated by Whoopi Goldberg, spent a lot of time last week sympathising with Mrs Obama about how difficult it must be to argue with a husband who never shows any fire or emotion.

Even the liberal chattering classes are deserting Obama. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times jeered that his "Yes we can" slogan had been downgraded to "Will we ever?", while fellow colunnist Frank Rich blasted his "recurrent tardiness in defining exactly what he wants done"...

If you've lost Whoopi and la Dowd, it's pretty much game over, I'd say.