In the flush times for Barack Obama his supporters and the media actually thought the seas would subside and the planet would cool if he were elected. He could do or say nothing wrong. Even his mistakes were cause for awe. My, how things have changed.

Just check out the front page story in today’s Cincinnati Enquirer, written in advance of Obama’s visit there today:

The main head and the subhead are definitely editorial comment and, therefore, not up to snuff. They’re assertions of debatable fact unattributed to anyone. This is not uncommon where a conservative ideas and politicians are concerned, but it rarely happens to a liberal, much less to Obama.

I’m guessing the Enquirer editors thought twice about the print headline, too, since the hed on the web version of the story attributes the assertion to “experts.” The equally editorial subhead, “It’s prop for jobs bill,” does not appear online, either:

Nevertheless, that such a headline and subhead could appear in print in any mainstream major daily newspaper speaks volumes about Obama’s falling political fortunes.

Obama made similar references to crumbling infrastructure during his campaign appearance official presidential visit to Raleigh a week ago:

“In North Carolina alone, there are 153 structurally deficient bridges that need to be repaired,” Obama said Wednesday. “Four of them are near here, on or around the Beltline. Why would we wait to act until another bridge falls?”

But, as The News & Observer pointed out Tuesday, most of what he said about North Carolina’s bridges was untrue, or, as the N&O helpfully put it, could be excused as typical pol-speak:

[E]mploying the deft spin that political speakers use when they spice up a little information to make a big impression – the president may have over-suggested the risk to public safety.

That over-suggestion assessment did not appear in the N&O’s next-day coverage of Obama’s visit to Raleigh, however. It took almost a week before the the N&O’s traffic reporter added the caveat.

In Cincinnati, their skepticism appeared, possibly inadvertently, in the main front-page headline the day after Obama’s speech.

Jon Ham is vice president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of its newspaper, Carolina Journal.