Announcing that the president “is being politically crushed in a vise,” Mark Halperin delivers an extraordinarily condescending scolding in Time this week. The interesting part is that Halperin's obituary for Obama, penned on behalf of Washington, D.C. “elites” who all know the president is cooked, comes in the wake of Obama's polling rebound last week. (See here and here.)

But Halperin makes no mention of that fact. He's too busy telling us what all the really, really smart people know: Obama is in over his head. Worse, he's “clueless” as to “how to get along with or persuade members” of the media! So Halperin rolls over every conceivable RNC, anti-Obama talking point.

But this one to me seemed just bizarre:

Throughout the year, we have been treated to Obama-led attacks on George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Congressman Joe Barton (for his odd apology to BP), John Boehner (for seeking the speakership -- or was it something about an ant?) and Fox News (for everything). Suitable Democratic targets in some cases, perhaps, but not worth the time of a busy Commander in Chief.

That's right, Obama, in the eyes of media elites like Halperin, is not allowed to fight back against his political opponents. Why? Because it's unseemly. Apparently it's not that unseemly when his opponents accuse him of being a racist and a Nazi and tyrant and a liar and a terrorist-sympathizer and foreign-born. It's unseemly when Obama answers his critics. It's unseemly when he defends himself.

This is really just astonishing. Media elites like Halperin have been witness to the most unhinged and hateful and sustained attack on a sitting president in modern American history. Their take-away after nearly two years of this hate-fest? It's Obama's fault. And worse, it's his fault when he defends himself.