"Submerged Government" Sounds Like the Next Angelina Jolie Movie

While the Right screaming from Day 1 that Obama is "in over his head" is to be expected, it's become de riguer for people that voted for him to now be "disillusioned" re: him not delivering puppies and rainbows to them, when the fact is he's already delivered most of what he said he would during his campaign.  Part of this is people's general laziness I suppose, along with an insanely loud 24/7 media and political grandstanding.  But there's also a fundamental flaw in what people's view of what governing actually is:

American politics today is ensnared in the paradox of the submerged state. Our government is integrally intertwined with everyday life from healthcare to housing, but in forms that often elude our vision: Governance appears “stateless” because it operates indirectly, through subsidizing private actors. Thus, many Americans express disdain for government social spending, incognizant that they themselves benefit from it. Even if they do realize that the benefits they utilize emanate from government, often they fail to recognize them as “social programs.” People are therefore easily seduced by calls for smaller government — while taking for granted public programs on which they themselves rely.

And of course there's Obama leading the league in not getting the word out:

 The first major piece of legislation that Obama had signed into law, the stimulus bill of February 2009, included a vast array of tax cuts: They totaled $288 billion, 37 percent of the cost of the entire bill. Among them, the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, one of his campaign promises, reduced income taxes for 95 percent of all working Americans. Yet one year after the law went into effect, when pollsters queried the public about whether the Obama administration had raised or lowered taxes for most Americans, only 12 percent answered correctly that taxes had decreased; 53 percent mistakenly thought taxes had stayed the same; and 24 percent even believed they had increased!