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Another week in the life of our nation sweeps by, and with it comes more evidence that the gloom and doom which has enveloped conservatives for the past year may finally be lifting. It's not so much the election of Republicans to the governorships of Virginia and especially New Jersey; although to be sure, these were most welcome events. After all, liberal northeastern states like Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut have traditionally favored Republican 'daddies' to preside over the state coffers while sending their liberal 'nannies' off to Washington to deepen the federal deficit.

No, it's not so much what happened as how the reaction to these events by President Obama and his administration will be perceived by the voting public. And if there is any consistency to the American character, it won't be pretty for the big O. Despite the sorry economic picture with its double-digit unemployment rate, and even laying aside the increasingly unpopular government takeovers of our banking, auto and healthcare industries, the issue that will soon usher Democrats out of power is national defense.

This week the world marked the 20th Anniversary of the demise of the Berlin Wall, that symbol of the inhuman regard that communists have for human beings; almost one hundred miles of proof that it is not free nations that have to wall their people in to keep them from getting out. Quite the opposite is true; countries like ours have a hard time keeping people who long for liberty and freedom out.

Yet our president--sworn defender of the U.S. Constitution--has seen fit to skip the celebration of the restoration to millions of peoples the freedoms that our venerated document represents and guarantees. This is not only a slap in the face to our allies, but in keeping with his apology tour of earlier this year, it is a further reminder that Barack Obama does not share much of the country's reverence for the American Dream.

Ronald Reagan, hero at the Brandenburg Gate, and George W. Bush, scourge of the Axis of Evil, understood that Dream as not just an opportunity for a higher standard of living, but a life of freedom from tyranny and fear. For these ideals, many U.S. soldiers have given their lives, but sadly, in the upside-down America of Barack Obama, their returning comrades are now considered potential terrorists.

And this brings us to outrage number two: the president's handling of the Fort Hood shootings. For a man who flies to Europe in a vain and shallow attempt to secure the Olympics for his home town, and spends millions for a "date" with his wife in New York City, his refusal to speed immediately to the scene of an attack on a U.S. Army base is reprehensible. Even worse is his apparent inability to even consider that the killings are part of the global Islamist jihad.

This man, whose administration has decreed that we are no longer engaged in a "war on terror" must, in his own mind, actually believe it. There's no other explanation for his dithering for two months on whether or not to acquiesce to the request of his generals on the ground for more troops in Afghanistan. It is not hard to understand that this kind of overcautious indecision on the part of the commander of the greatest fighting force in modern history is indeed unprecedented, and can only serve to embolden our enemies.

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