Barack Obama is locked in a lose-lose situation

Telegraph
"..Nobody could have expected Mr Obama to fix all these problems in the 20 months he has been in the job, but they might by now reasonably have expected at least a glimpse of the promised sunlit uplands.

There is no such vision on the horizon. Joblessness remains stubbornly high and, far from becoming self-sustaining, the recovery shows signs of stalling. In short, Mr Obama's economic policies have failed, or at least that is the growing public perception. ....Rarely have Americans felt so down in the dumps; collectively, they seem to have lost their innate sense of self-belief and optimism. Not since the 1930s has the American dream looked so forlorn. What's gone wrong, and why has the patient proved so unwilling to respond to the extraordinary fiscal and monetary medicine applied? ......Whatever his other achievements, Mr Obama will go down in history as the worst president since Jimmy Carter if he cannot make headway on either of these issues. It's hard to be optimistic. Mr Obama looks like a beached whale. "