Conor Friedersdorf has an excellent rebuttal to Andrew Sullivan. He emphasizes the continuing assault on civil liberties by the Obama administration and the expansion of the war on terror through the use of drones to kill suspected terrorists, in secrecy and without any apparent checks. It is hard to imagine the rationale for criticizing Bush for the use of torture but be okay with the increased use of assassination and the use of predator drones in neutral countries. Furthermore the involvement in Libya (regardless of how it turned out) was done without any attempt to get Congress or the UN to approve it. At least Bush did go to Congress to gain some legal cover for what he did. Sullivan is so enamored of Obama that he will claim that anything the President does is evidence of a "long game" strategy. He makes this claim so often that it is impossible to take him seriously. As Friedersdorf points out, he also uses it to give Obama credit for things he opposes such as gay marriage and pot legalization. How can anyone think Sullivan has any objectivity whatsoever when analyzing President Obama?

We need someone who likes firing people

Ann Coulter had the same reaction to Romney's statement about liking to fire people as I did. It's one of the best things he's ever said. We definitely need a president who likes firing people because there are a lot of people in the government who should be fired. It's notoriously difficult to fire government employees even when they are found to have committed serious violations of law or ethics. Many administrations have gotten into trouble because of a reluctance to fire a key adviser. The President is the chief executive of the federal government and any president should have the guts to fire federal employees who are not performing their jobs.