This Is a Man, Not a Superhero

Critics of Barack Obama are taking last week's confrontation by Velma Hart, a struggling middle-class black supporter, as proof that the president has lost even the support of African-American voters. Hart, who told Obama she was "still waiting for change" couldn't "have done a better job for the elephants if GOP head Michael Steele had written her statement," writes Stanley Crouch for the New York Daily News. The Hart encounter will provide fodder for attacking the president along racial lines, but it illustrates Obama's problem with liberals in general.

The far left and the black middle class represented by Hart feel "betrayed because Obama has not turned America into Eden in less than two years," nor transformed into a "black superhero sent to right all of the wrongs against black people and remove remaining obstacles from their path," Crouch writes. "Obama never promised that, " and that's not what we need, anyway. Forget the heroes of mythology and the Bible and Hollywood: We need "sensible leaders who step down into the mess and get the job done" and the fortitude to " to stay the course and refuse to give in to fatigue and paralytic cynicism ."
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