John Brown's Body Lies a Spinning in His Grave

Consider the following comment about President Obama from a recent Der Standard article, one of Austria's largest newspapers:

Two-and-a-half years after his election, Barack Obama, the first African-American president in the history of the United States, is in danger of becoming a one-term president, a failure who has largely lost the support of the urban liberals, workers, black and Hispanic Americans, environmentalists and youth of the 2008 election through his hesitation and wavering. The 50-year-old Obama is no longer the shining light for the start of a new age, but rather a politician, who, through his zigzag course and sellouts in economic, finance and social policy, has deeply disappointed the (admittedly inflated) expectations of his supporters.

Perhaps Barack Obama's biggest crime is that because of his broken promises, because his weakness and inaction, because of his war-making and continuance of Bush-era civil liberty violations -- because of all of this -- it is likely that no other minority-American candidate for higher office will be given the benefit of the doubt for a generation. Perhaps for even longer. Obama's biggest crime is that he has made statements like that which titles this post conceptually plausible, rather than merely racist -- and that is perhaps the one thing he has done that is unforgivable.