It is time to give credit where credit is due - to America's evil geniuses (political division). Even though Karl Rove is not in a position to work his old magic as he once did, other evil geniuses have stepped to the fore to fill the gap.

This just goes to show that you can't keep old-fashioned American ingenuity down. We are No. 1 when it comes to evil geniuses who shape public opinion! Hurrah for us! Consider the political situation. We have a still relatively new president, Barack Obama, who took the oath of office on a Bible that belonged to President Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator. So inspired, Obama has since become the Great Compromiser.

Although some of us (i.e., me) have not quite given up on him, Obama can be fairly criticized on a number of fronts, and his penchant for compromising is largely responsible for that. He wants to do the right thing and he wants to please everyone, the former not always compatible with the latter. His decision on Afghanistan is a prime example - we will surge into the war zone and then we will surge back home. Hurrah for us (again)! The Afghan decision also bears the hallmark of too much thinking. Now, thinking is good - I try to do it at least once a day - but things can be over-thought. In fact, we have gone from a president who had the occasional thought rattling around his head like a stone in a bucket to one whose thought balloons are so large they hardly leave room for intuitive wisdom in the Oval Office.

Just make up your mind and do it, Mr. President - that is what the American people too often want to say. Instead, they get all this caution in the service of compromising with people who won't compromise and winning the affection of people who aren't affectionate.

This is where the evil geniuses (political) come in. The challenge for them is that old bugbear, reality. They are faced with a president who obviously wants to find the middle road and end partisanship and who is by nature cautious and good-hearted. In human terms, these are endearing traits - and, of course, that will never do. Reality must be changed because partisanship must endure, otherwise evil geniuses would be unemployed.

The work of changing reality began quickly. Almost in the same breath it was put around that not only did Obama attend the shocking Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Christian church for many years but also he was a Muslim, which would be a very strange thing for a Muslim to do. (When I go to church, I rarely see any Muslims). To sell this bizarre and contradictory notion took genius.

The troublesome idea that the president is smart had to be turned around, too. Fortunately for the evil geniuses, Obama, while visibly tired on the campaign trail, stumbled and referred to 57 states, which confirmed the populist image of ex-presidents of the Harvard Law Review as Dumbos. A normal person would look at this and other slips often mentioned and just laugh, but that would be to be under estimate evil and genius both.

The touch of genius is also upon the fuss about TelePrompTers (all modern presidents have used them) and unconfirmed czars (recent presidents have had them - and, moreover, when experts were called to Congress to testify about this concern they agreed they were constitutional). Still, you have to admire the genius of those who tied people's knickers in a twist.

The same can be said of the string pullers for the tea-bag protest movement. The very name conjures up the spirit of those who resisted taxes in Boston long ago, except that one of Obama's first acts was to pass a stimulus package that included tax cuts for most taxpayers. To make people forget about this was genius, sheer genius.

But in my view the greatest act of evil genius was to dust off the hoary stereotypes about Marxists and socialists and apply them to Obama, a leader milquetoast enough to confound any real revolutionaries. And how can these labels have any sting in an era that thought it proper for Communist China to own most of our debt and produce most of our consumer goods? And how can they call health care reform socialism when the public option barely hangs on? Genius, my friends, and evil at that.

I wonder if the evil geniuses have out-genius-ed themselves. As I say, reality offers enough grounds for Obama to be criticized but his critics are too busy being absurd to make the plausible points.

Reg Henry is a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.