"Obama is...a man who won the presidency largely on the basis of the electorate's judgment about his personality — he was seen as bright, and personable, and engaging, which was not surprising, because he is bright, and personable, and engaging. He was, for all intents and purposes, a Rorschach ink blot test for the body politic — individual voters saw in him whatever it was they wanted to see in him, reflected back to them.
He was so popular, in fact, that he became only the fourth Democratic President in the last century and a half to win an outright majority of the popular vote — something Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman, and Bill Clinton, and even the sainted John Kennedy failed to accomplish.
Imagine, then, how frustrating it must be for him to be that popular, but not to be able to enact either his legislative or his political agenda; to know that, among the public, he has a deep reservoir of goodwill, but to know that for his ends, it is all but worthless."
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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