"This president seems quite willing to embrace weakness as a position for the United States," Fox News' Brit Hume said on the network's "Fox News Sunday" in November. "I mean, the bowing and scraping that we see -- Saudi Arabia we saw it. We saw it on this trip in Japan. These kind of gestures -- they wouldn't mean anything if they didn't seem to be of a piece with the general approach that the president has taken."

The problem with that line of attack is that it's easier to list the presidents who have bowed to foreign leaders than to list the ones who haven't. Besides Nixon, there's also Bill Clinton, who drew mild mocking, but not the full outrage treatment, for bowing to Akihito in 1994. His predecessor, George H.W. Bush, bowed to Hirohito's body while attending his funeral in 1989. Dwight Eisenhower appears to have been unable to resist bowing to almost anyone he met -- one liberal blog compiled a photo montage showing Eisenhower bending at the waist before a pope, the wife of an Italian prime minister, a Greek Orthodox primate, and French President Charles de Gaulle. And despite the huffing and puffing from the right, the ban on American presidents bowing that they all kept citing doesn't actually seem to exist. Even Fox News had to admit the bows "may not have violated any official protocol."

So while it's true that Obama did bow to a couple of foreigners, this still counts as one of the year's bogus stories because there's just no story. Plenty of presidents have done the same thing. There seem to be new rules for this one.

Less than a month later, Politico went back to Cheney, and the former V.P. made similar shrill allegations. He blasted Obama for pledging to close Guantánamo prison, and distorted Obama's position: "When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an al-Qaida terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney said. On March 15, Cheney raised the alarm level with CNN's John King. "President Obama campaigned against it all across the country, and now he is making some choices that, in my mind, will, in fact, raise the risk to the American people of another attack."

OK, got it. Cheney's regime was repudiated by Obama and the American people, Cheney's not happy about it, he makes hysterical accusations; next story. Three months, three crazy charges. But Cheney kept popping out of his hole and repeating his rants, and it started to seem like "Groundhog Day": New morning, same story, the alarm goes off and Cheney's still singing. But the coverage didn't stop. Some of it was from right-wing outlets: Sean Hannity in April, radio talker Scott Hennen in May.

Also in May there was a CBS "Face the Nation" interview and a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute. All of Cheney's specious, tedious attacks got covered widely, as though they were news, when they were not.

The silliness continued all year, with Cheney making headlines for the same charges (as well as an idiotic attack on Obama for bowing, ignoring the bow his old boss Richard Nixon gave to then-Japanese Emperor Hirohito). But this bogus story reached its low point Dec. 1, with yet another breathless Politico interview: "Dick Cheney slams President Obama for projecting 'weakness'" – on the eve of Obama's speech announcing an escalation in Afghanistan. Back in the day, Cheney and friends would have called that kind of criticism traitorous, especially at such a crucial time. But Politico just transcribed Cheney's rant and ran it as its top story.

A lot of liberals blast Politico for carrying the GOP's water, and its symbiosis with the Drudge Report seems beyond dispute. To be fair, it also breaks some news. So it was sad to see top editors John Harris and Jim Vandehei serving as Cheney's stenographers on one of the most bogus stories of the year. They have the resources to do better; let's hope they do in 2010.

"It's about being a candidate as opposed to being president," said the drug industry's top lobbyist in defense of Obama's flip-flop.

This explanation is common among politicos -- we last heard it when the New York Times' John Harwood quoted an administration aide attacking those demanding Obama fulfill his campaign pledges. Disenchanted activists, said the White House, "need to take off [their] pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely divided country is complicated."

These "candidate vs. president" idioms are standard among Beltway elites who belong to what New York University's Jay Rosen calls "the Church of the Savvy." Their catechism says that anyone demanding a president deliver on campaign promises is naive because, allegedly, there is an inherent difference between what a candidate can tell voters and what that candidate can support as president. Those rejecting this "savvy" interpretation are therefore lambasted as petulant children who refuse to "take off their pajamas" and "get dressed."

It's a canard, of course -- one sculpted to excuse selling out. And there are two huge problems with it.

First, ignoring presidents' broken promises defiles our republican democracy. In America, we only get to choose presidents every four years, meaning we must rely on campaign promises as metrics for electoral choices. But if the entire idea of the campaign promise becomes an assumed joke, then we have no metrics by which to elect leaders.

Second, an obvious but taboo truth: There are almost no substantive reasons candidates cannot champion their election-year promises once in office. These pledges are made through deliberative processes. Candidates shouldn't make them if they're not serious about follow-through -- and it's not unreasonable to ask officeholders to at least try to honor the campaign commitments that informed voters' electoral decisions. That's especially true on something like drug importation, whose opposition is about enlarging profits, not, as Obama aides argue, about protecting consumer safety.

Drug companies already manufacture medicines in the developing world so as to evade U.S. labor, environmental and safety regulations. They then legally import those products for sale to Americans at inflated prices. The new bill would have merely let wholesalers, not just manufacturers, import medicines -- but at the lower prices the manufacturers concurrently sell those medicines abroad. Such wholesale importation is permitted throughout Europe and the rest of the industrialized world. So two questions: If the administration actually believes importation is unsafe, why isn't it banning current drug imports? And if the administration specifically insists wholesale importation is unsafe, then where are all the dead Europeans?

Certainly, some "candidate vs. president" differences might justify rare instances of dishonesty. A president might momentarily dissemble to, say, protect soldiers on the battlefield.

But fibbing for the public good is different than breaking promises for private gain. In the latter cases, "candidate vs. president" apologias are non sequiturs. They justify nothing -- and they clearly do not rationalize an importation U-turn by Obama designed only to protect a drug cartel.

That kind of power-coddling reversal insults voters, and absolving such an insult isn't savvy -- it betrays our nation's founding principles.

And there's a new study this week, "Rewarding Failure," from the public interest group Public Citizen, revealing that in the years leading up to the financial meltdown, the CEOs of the 10 Wall Street giants that either collapsed or got huge amounts of TARP money were paid an average of $28.9 million dollars a year.

In 2007, that amounted to 575 times the median income of an American family. Now, thanks in part to the banks' monumental malfeasance that led to our economic swan dive, food stamps are now being used to feed one in eight Americans and a quarter of all the kids in this country. A new poll from the New York Times and CBS News reports that more than half of our unemployed have borrowed money from friends and relatives and have cut back on medical treatments. The Times wrote, "Joblessness has wreaked financial and emotional havoc on the lives of many of those out of work ... causing major life changes, mental health issues and trouble maintaining even basic necessities."

Yet according to the nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform, the reported $150 billion that Wall Street is paying itself in compensation and bonuses this year would be enough to solve the budget crisis of every one of the 50 states or create millions of jobs or prevent all foreclosures for four years.

All of this wretched excess is occurring as more and more people can't afford a roof over their heads. Foreclosures were up another 5 percent in the third quarter -- 23 percent more than a year ago. Fewer Americans are willing to buy foreclosed properties, and the Obama administration's foreclosure prevention plan has been a bust so far -- way too timid, critics say, and many of the banks won't play ball, refusing to negotiate in good faith with homeowners desperate to hold on.

We got a firsthand look at the crisis this week when thousands lined up at the Jacob Javits Convention Center just a few blocks from our Manhattan offices to attend a mortgage assistance event sponsored by the nonprofit Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA). So many showed up for this leg of the "Save the Dream Tour" that on many days, staff and volunteers stayed to help until 1 in the morning.

NACA has had success getting homeowners and banks together to work out a deal to prevent foreclosure. But the big banks' return to the government of the TARP bailout money with which we underwrote them over the last 14 months is a mixed blessing -- great to have the cash returned so quickly, terrible because any leverage Washington held over the banks because of the loans virtually vanishes with the payback. They're back in the saddle and not inclined to be of much assistance helping anyone else out, especially those in mortgage trouble.

As Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times wrote in the wake of Obama's Monday meeting with Wall Street's top guns (three of whom failed to show up because of airport delays)

Executive compensation, leverage limits and lending standards were all issues that Washington said it planned to change -- and when the taxpayers were the shareholders of these firms, it probably could have done so. But now the White House has been left in the position of extending invitations, rather than exercising its clout. And in the figurative and literal sense, it is getting stood up.

Afterward, Obama said, "The problem is there's a big gap between what I'm hearing here in the White House and the activities of lobbyists on behalf of these institutions or associations of which they're a member up on Capitol Hill."

That's putting it mildly. This week, the American Bankers Association sent out an update and "call to action" memorandum crowing over its success in watering down the bank reform bill that was approved by the House and urging its members to beat back similar legislation in the Senate. Self-righteously, it concludes, "As one of your New Year's resolutions, please vow to do everything in your power to show, and to have your colleagues in your bank show, your Senators the right path to true reform."

It helps when the right path is paved with silver and gold. As "Crossing Wall Street," a November report from the Center for Responsive Politics, notes:

The finance, insurance and real estate sector has given $2.3 billion to candidates, leadership PACs and party committees since 1989, which eclipses every other sector ...

The financial sector has also been a voracious lobbying force, spending an unprecedented $3.8 billion since 1998, while sending an army of lobbyists to Capitol Hill to make its case. That's more money than any other sector has spent on influence peddling. Not even the healthcare sector, which spun up a lobbying frenzy this year over health reform, has spent more.

The banks are making a list and checking it twice. And we shouldn't forget that during his run for the White House, the finance sector filled Obama's stocking with $39.5 million worth of campaign contributions, more than for any other presidential candidate.

God bless us, every one!

Research support provided by "Bill Moyers Journal" producer William Brangham and associate producer Katia Maguire.

Under orders from the White House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid deleted the public plan and Medicare buy-in from the healthcare bill. This move has angered liberals, who rightfully point out that Obama is betraying promises from his own very recent presidential campaign. Howard Dean, a medical doctor and former head of the Democratic National Committee, has advocated that senators "kill" the bill and craft a new measure that offers "real reform." Furthermore, Senator Bernie Sanders, who actually prefers a single-payer system, announced yesterday that he was not committed to voting for the legislation in its present format.

As I have already written, White House officials have moved to attack and discredit liberals who oppose the Senate bill. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, for example, said that Dean was acting irrationally. Also, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod said that liberal opponents of the Senate bill are "insane." The White House response has only enhanced anger among liberals.

Axelrod conducted a conference call with liberal bloggers on Wednesday, and he faced numerous questions regarding the White House response to progressive opponents of the Senate bill. One blogger asked Axelrod whether the White House would respond with similar anger to Ben Nelson, the moderate Democrat who also announced his opposition to the Senate bill because he wants tougher provisions related the delivery of abortion services. According to The Nation, during the conference call, Axelrod tried to back away from the harshness of his previous comments regarding liberals:

"I'm not professionally qualified to judge insanity and maybe I should have used a different word," Axelrod said, and he noted that "everybody's a little on edge at this point" in the long legislative battle. He also stressed his respect for allies in the "progressive community," but reiterated his view that it would be "wrongheaded" to squash all of health care reform at this point, which is "infinitely better" than the status quo.

My take: I suspect that liberals will remain disappointed. The White House did not describe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu or Bill Nelson as "insane" or "irrational" when they threatened to vote against or filibuster the proposed legislation. Instead, the White House moved to appease them.

Liberal activists, many of whom worked to elect Obama, feel betrayed by the White House's angry response to their legitimate complaints. Furthermore, this is not the first time liberals have felt let down by the White House. On issues as diverse as gay rights and the Afghanistan War, liberals believe that President Obama has not taken their interests into account or that he has moved away from his campaign promises. These types of feelings do not vanish easily.