Yes. I agree that Barack Obama's first press conference belied his promise of a new era of gracious statesmanship. He came out swinging--and did not hesitate to throw low blows and rabbit punches. His partisan assertions reviling Republicans were not just dubious; they were most of the time demonstrably false and embarrassingly patronizing.

If he had only been as generous with us as Iran, whom he called an "extraordinary people with an extraordinary history and traditions." On the other hand, the GOP appeared again and again as a gang of unrepentant politicians with bad Washington habits intent on dithering in the face of economic misery for the American people.

This is disappointing on several different levels.

However, I have heard too many conservatives today gleefully predicting that his honeymoon is over.

Here's the problem: at the core of the President's "unhelpful" tone is the following undeniable fact.

"First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now."

This is the club with which Democrats will beat us for the rest of our lives--or until they do something worse (which, unfortunately, is a distinct possibility).

But until then--here is the set of facts that supersede all possible excuses. While we were running things, we ran up a ten trillion dollar national debt. Again, the bitter pill in all this is that the principal charge is absolutely undeniable. We really did it.

It is going to take decades to live down this ugly fact. Don't look for all to be forgiven in a few election cycles--much less a fortnight.