Specifically, for the team of top notch reporters who are trying to cover the most complex and challenging economic story of our lifetime. And by most accounts they're doing a good job staying on top of the constantly changing crisis.

The embarrassing part is when they open up the opinion pages of their own newspaper and see the editorials about the economy that read like they were penned by pledging members of the Young Republicans club.

Like the Journal's attempt to blame Obama for the downturn in the stock market. Only a fool would make that case. (i.e. Slumping housing prices in December and January were Obama's fault? Okay.....) But that's what the Journal proudly did this week:

As 2009 opened, three weeks before Barack Obama took office, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9034 on January 2, its highest level since the autumn panic. Yesterday the Dow fell another 4.24% to 6763, for an overall decline of 25% in two months and to its lowest level since 1997. The dismaying message here is that President Obama's policies have become part of the economy's problem.

Over at NPR, Dick Meyer makes what should be this glaringly obvious point:

The idea of blaming one person for the downfall of the economy with a gross domestic product of about $14 trillion, powered by 300 million people and engaged in complex global commerce is nuts — whether that person is Bush, Obama, Alan Greenspan, Bernard Madoff, Osama bin Laden or the editors of opinions at The Wall Street Journal.

And if the Journal wants to toss around numbers to play the stock market blame game, Meyer notes [emphasis added]:

The rather more substantial fall came when the Dow was hovering around 14,000 in October 2007 and then tanked to 7552 on Nov. 20, 2008? That would mean, using the nastiest numbers, that the Dow fell about 46.5 percent on President Bush's watch. So far during the Obama administration, the Dow has dropped 15 percent.