It wasn't carping so much as disbelief.
In person, he sometimes cuts a beleaguered figure.The Lib Dems are following their leader's injunction to "own" everything the coalition does instead of openly carping at policies they dislike.
Independent Slovak newspapers are full of carping articles explaining why the economy is shaky, why foreigners invest so little, why Slovakia stands almost no chance of being among the first new members of either the EU or NATO.
Carping criticism from head office in Stuttgart persuaded fed-up Chrysler executives to leave for new jobs, further weakening the company.
Still, he has to remember that, in this war especially, realpolitik, diplomacy and even those carping Europeans have a role.
Mr Timmermans, a former Labour MP, is a dedicated multilingual European who grew up in a diplomatic family.Instead of carping, the Dutch this week boasted of the appointment of Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Labour finance minister, as new chairman of the Eurogroup of finance ministers.
Most sites carping at President Bashar Assad's government are silenced, as are many Kurdish and Islamist sites.
That will not stop the envious from carping.
If France presses its opposition to the point of vetoing any effort to back up Resolution 1441 with force, then America will probably bypass the UN altogether, making it look feebler still.Until now, France's allies in NATO have seen it as a "bad-weather friend"—carping and difficult over many things, but ready to help out in a crunch.
As they have now found, running the place is a lot more difficult than carping from the sidelines.This test has been conducted most visibly in Egypt, where despite its initial electoral success the Brotherhood struggled to secure longer-term gains.
He clashed with tribunes of the new Right in Congress, notably Newt Gingrich, the future House speaker, but also railed at "carping little liberal Democrats".Nearly 22 years ago the middle way led to defeat, squeezed between Mr Clinton and conservative and populist critics, including the independent presidential candidate Ross Perot.
