Watching the “Big Bird” ad that Charlie posted earlier, which President Obama’s campaign released to attack Mitt Romney, I couldn’t help but think back to this part of Obama’s February 2007 speech in Springfield, Ill. when he launched his first campaign for president:

What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.

Add it to the long list of areas where Obama didn’t live up to the lofty rhetoric of his 2008 campaign.