Washington, Nov.5 (ANI): The Politico web site has spoken to a dozen political insiders and pulled together a list of President Barack Obama’s ten best, and ten worst, moves of the year.

Ten Worst:

6. No earmarks? Well, maybe just a few . . .billion

Obama campaigned hard against earmarks, but in March, he signed a $410 billion spending measure that was laden with more than $7 billion worth of the targeted spending provisions anyway. The president called the bill “imperfect” but didn’t veto the measure, and sent an early signal that he would bend - even on a core campaign priority.

“He had an opportunity to really be different,” said former Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer. “He could have dominated and controlled Washington. But instead, he went along with it. Washington has not changed.”

7. No vetting the vetters

From Tom Daschle’s Town Cars, to Tim Geithner’s Turbo Tax to Bill Richardson’s federal grand jury troubles, Obama aides early in the year seemed incapable of turning up major problems before they hit the papers.

8. Gitmo, Year Two

Candidate Obama campaigned on closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, so it seemed to make sense when he set a deadline of January of 2010 to have the facility shuttered. By all accounts, it’s not going to happen. Obama and his team failed to take into account the extreme difficulty of deciding what do with the prisoners there - Congress won’t let them come to prisons here, U.S. allies don’t want them either.

9. Snubbing the Dalai Lama

The White House was at pains to say Obama didn’t snub the Dalai Lama in October when the Tibetan religious leader was in Washington - but it sure looked like he did. Obama’s decision not to meet with him in Washington - even though the White House promised another meeting at a date to be named later - gave ammunition to his critics that Obama was downplaying human rights to appease the Chinese.

10. Beating up on FOX News.

Obama ran as a post-partisan candidate who rejected the old ways of Washington. But attacking the conservative network is just the sort of base building, red vs. blue move Obama seemed to denounce during the campaign. Even some Democrats were scratching their heads, saying it seemed beneath Obama to single out one network - a far cry from the inspirational, bridge-building figure the nation elected one year ago. (ANI)