Last month I mentioned a brilliant cartoon by Tom Tomorrow that effectively lampooned how the American right as bizarrely warped perceptions of the positions held by President Obama. In it, Tom pointed out the irony of the right portraying Obama as a crazed liberal, when in fact most of his actions show he is a centrist with some strongly rightwing views on executive power. At the time, Tom and I got into a back-and-forth on Twitter, as I viewed his toon as showing pretty clearly the same sort of dynamic from the left, wherein the President has taken positions that are similar or even more extreme than Bush on many issues, yet some Democratic supporters gloss over what this means. I tried to highlight the behavior on the left as similar laughable to what Tom described on the right.

I missed it at the time (I was on vacation), but a couple weeks ago, Tom did a new cartoon describing the similar phenomenon of liberal attitudes on Obama. Part of the point that Tom makes so well in this strip (and people like Glenn Greenwald have made repeatedly since early 2009) is that liberals cannot and should not change their assessments of a President’s actions dependent on what party that person belongs to and whether or not you voted for them. If you’re changing your views or apologizing for a politician who has not met your expectations, something is wrong.

The strip definitely worth a read and I hope/imagine the new character, “Chuckles” the Sensible Woodchuck, will be a recurring one in this strip.