While the pundits try to figure out whether Obama’s decision to kill Osama bin Laden will benefit him politically, the average American—after some celebration—is really fixated on the economy.

Unemployment still hovers around 9%.  Home values are still down, and the dollar is in a nosedive.  Food and gas prices are soaring, and one in seven Americans receives food stamps.

Is this how we “win the future”?

Perhaps, but it’s hard to fathom.

After all, how can so many Americans sidelined by joblessness, more joining entitlement rolls and accepting the budding normality of a marginalized and cheapened understanding of individual responsibility, be seen as anything other than losing the future?

While Obama and his supporters cling to the complaint that the alleged “ditch” Bush put the nation into is bigger than they thought, it’s been long enough for the Obama team to own it (especially because it took more than enough credit when it came to bin Laden).

This seems especially true because Obama stiff-armed the will of the people on many of his legislative priorities.  He’s shackling job creation through restrictive regulation.  Where “cap-and-trade” emissions restrictions failed in Congress, for example, the EPA has stepped in.  ObamaCare appears to be pushing up premiums for families and businesses, not down.  Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department is reportedly committed to defending “my people” but not established laws such as the Defense of Marriage Act, and it sued Arizona for enforcing state rules regarding illegal immigration that mimic federal statutes.  All while, the Federal Reserve does its best to print the dollar into the Weimar Mark.

Elsewhere, Texas lost more than 2 million acres to wildfires—yet the Obama administration denied disaster status that could provide federal aid (but Obama did go to Texas today to promote "comprehensive immigration reform").  Thousands are sifting through the remains of some of the worst tornadoes in decades, and the Mississippi River is flooding cities from Illinois to Louisiana.

And are we not still in two wars and a “kinetic military action” in Libya?

All this comes from the guy who was supposed to get us out of that ditch?  Like transparency, it appears that focus was another thing cast aside when the campaign ended.

Consider his golfing habit.  Before he was elected, Obama was never known to be such a golf nut.  He was, however, known as a churchgoer.  But after his election, this seems to be reversed.  As President, Obama has hit the links more than 60 times.  By contrast he’s been to church fewer than 10 times.  And when he has gone to church, it seems largely for show—on holidays and in venues that seem more for the media coverage than out of faith.

It questions the President’s priorities.

Can you recall Bush taking it on the chin from Michael Moore and the media for golfing?  And how he then gave up golfing in deference to the troops who were in harms way?  Obama need not follow suit, but he was putting in nine holes while the bin Laden mission was in progress.  Somehow, the media isn’t as eager to hold Obama to the same standard.  (Obama should have inherited the media of the Bush era.)

Fortunately, even with a media—embarrassingly impotent and still slobbering over the President—comfortable with peddling a news narrative that is apologetic to the Obama agenda and cultivates a culture of lowered expectations, the country has reached an impasse.

More and more polls are showing that Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult for even the most ardent Obama supporters to continue to blame Bush.  And the gap between the American people and this White House looks wider every day.

While next month marks the anniversary of the “Summer of Recovery,” a quick trip to your local gas station or grocery store feels more like relapse.

But don’t worry.  Between winning golf games and winning reelection, Obama is sure to find time to win our future too.