Remember how conservatives howled when Newsweek ran a cover story declaring President Barack Obama "the first gay president" and showcased an image of him glowing beneath a rainbow halo?
They will likely be happier with the latest Newsweek cover, which shows the president looking over his shoulder and bears this copy: "Hit the Road, Barack: Why We Need a New President." They didn't even bother to use his surname or his hard-won honorific. Really?
Written by conservative historian Niall Ferguson, the cover story is a major change of pace for the magazine. It is sure to light a fire under an already contentious presidential race. Ferguson writes:
I was a good loser four years ago. "In the grand scheme of history," I wrote the day after Barack Obama's election as president, "four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing."
Despite having been — full disclosure — an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent's remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization.
Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.
In his inaugural address, Obama promised "not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth." He promised to "build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together." He promised to "restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost." And he promised to "transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age." Unfortunately the president's scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.
Read more at Newsweek.