Andrew Malcolm of IBD greets the new year with an appropriate degree of skepticism. Yes, that much. In a year that looks to be...shall we say, difficult, it is important to tell the truth and make it sting.

...the South Side president forgets to mention Chicago passing the 500-murder mark in 2012 during his painful paeans about the need for someone to do something about guns. Like many of his presidential responsibilities, Obama handed the violent gun issue over to Joe Biden to appear to do something about it.

Remember how Obama was going to erase the divisive partisanship of Washington? Well, the country reelected a divided federal government, which ensures divisive partisanship will continue. But voters can duck responsibility by pointing to D.C. and shaking their heads over elected members of Congress doing exactly what they were elected to do.

And American confidence in its institutions will wither more. Which is fine by Obama since he wants to change them anyway.

President Obama can call on all sides to please, pretty please, come together for the good of the country. Just before he ignites yet another self-serving, unnecessarily bitter crisis to keep opponents feuding. And then calls on all sides to reject their politics of division.

Which, by the way, is how the Democrat mayors of Chicago's machine have managed to rule the Windy City for eight decades, by keeping their party's feuding factions feuding and unable to coalesce behind an alternative to the Big Guy in City Hall. The Big Guy now is Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who's actually a tiny fellow who has what Chicago prizes, clout.

But the seeping Chicagoness of the nation's politics is probably coincidence.

Malcolm predicts excatly what I see happening:

And we'll all hear more overwhelming sums about the national debt being left for each of today's children to pay if they manage to find jobs as adults.

But by the time those bills come due, Obama will be making millions from his next autobiography.
His pals will be hitting up libs for big-money checks for the Barack H. Obama Presidential Library, which will not likely be located in Streator, Illinois.

And No. 44 will be safely ensconced in his beachfront mansion playing golf with his old buds from the Choom Gang, while the rest of us enjoy the expensive fruits of his labors transforming America into something else.