well, friend of the show and editorial directofor "the huffington post" howard feinman has been asking exact same thing. howard wrote about it in his new article out today, making a few headlines today. i want to get right to your op-ed where you write, remember the fresh promise of barack obama? what happened to that guy? what happened to that fresh idealistic guy? what happened to his power and popularity in the united states? why doesn't he dominate the political stage the way he once did? why isn't he as effective as we thought he would be? howard, you break it down pretty simply. it comes down to president obama himself. >> well, that's one part of it, abby. i was moved to write this piece because "the huffington post" now has a lot of international editions. we have 11 of them, as a matter of fact, around the world. and they asked me to write a piece trying to explain this. and so i tried to stand outside of the united states, if you will, and kind of look at it from way above. and explain things to people around the world who don't necessarily follow american politics as closely