Indeed, for all the derision from the left about the Bush administration not being “reality-based,” many lefty bloggers and talking heads have failed to be reality-based in assessing the Obama administration.

Health care reform, in this glass-half-empty world, is a disappointment because it lacks a public option. The president’s failure to close Guantanamo or end the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy is a betrayal. If only President Obama was willing to bang heads, name names, stand tough, he would have been able to get — fill in the blank — a bigger stimulus, tougher financial reform, new legislation to help unions organize…

What surprises me, though — and, no doubt, what set off Gibbs — is the venom of the liberal critics even in the face of the sustained attack on Obama from the right and a legislative record longer and more impressive than I would have guessed back then.