Despite the fact Barack Obama declared Mission Accomplished on the healthcare.gov website, his popularity is rapidly decreasing as Americans discover he is a Potemkin President.

University of St. Thomas student Vladimir Davidiuk takes a look at Obama’s entire political history, and wonders why people are actually shocked by the recent developments.

I wonder who would win in a debate: Senator Obama, or President Obama? I suspect President Obama is the only one who knows the real answer for sure. Ah, for the idealistic, hopeful naivete of youth. Cynicism in old age is so tragically gauche.

As instructive illustration, he maintained that his twenty-year relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was one that was so important to him, such a fundamental part of his past and his identity that when video of the Reverend’s inflammatory, demagogic sermons at Obama’s home church emerged, Obama claimed, ”I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” However, as soon as the good Reverend became a drag on his poll numbers, he was pitched overboard like Jonah.

In 1996, during his first run for public office, Obama’s view on same-sex marriage was “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” Fast-forward to the eve of the 2008 election, and his view of same-sex marriage in November of 2008 was “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage.” In the months before his re-election battle with Mitt Romney, with his poll numbers flagging, and the mood of the country shifting, on May 9, 2012 Obama announced his “evolution” on his deeply-held position and declared that “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

His values are informed not by core convictions, but by political expediency. ..

Citizens in a free republic have much to fear from this type of leader, because when such a leader has political cover and opportunity (see Obama’s first two years in office with control of the House of Representatives, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and high approval ratings) there is no limit to what they will attempt.

Worse still, when such a leader has no political cover and is beset by challenges (such as Obama’s embrace of the nuclear option on the heels of the complete collapse of Obamacare), they have nothing to lose. Nothing restrains them. Certainly not a centuries-old document drafted by long-dead men from a forgotten past.