Maybe I was deluding myself because I like the intelligence of Stewart’s humor, but I really believed he had a more balanced and centrist take on American life. If the White House was looking for the court jester and mouthpiece of the folks senior White House officials described as the “professional left,” they found him. He was sitting across from the president Wednesday night prodding him with all the White House had not done.

And that’s the difference, isn’t it? The right feels Obama has done way too much without thinking it through — call it the the cash-for-clunkers style of governing with massive and misguided social programs. The left, meanwhile, thinks he hasn’t done enough. He didn’t bring the British or Canadian model of health care to America overnight, for example. I think Stewart actually mentioned Canadian healthcare somewhere in his questioning Wednesday. But he never once seemed to be able to even conceive of a question that would come at the president from right of center — or even center-center.