So here we are almost 2 1/2 years into his presidency. We’re still in Iraq, still in Afghanistan. The economy is still in the Dumpster. U.S. credit has been downgraded. We’ve got a half-baked health care reform law that is being challenged. The middle class is still getting crushed.

Why has Obama not lived up to the promise? He is clearly intelligent. For some reason, though, he was not ready for the rough and tumble of national politics.

Maybe his background is the reason. He went to a private prep school in Hawaii and then Columbia University, and Harvard for law. These were white-majority schools, to be sure, but also places with educated, enlightened people who were happy to see a black kid succeed. That is, I suspect, a big thing. Nobody ever wanted to see him fail until he became president.

Hillary had been tested. Eight years in the meat grinder. She’d have been a better president.