Generals who say the mission failed because the troops didn’t follow orders shouldn’t be surprised when the troops start to mock them. Blame deflection isn’t leadership.

And that’s why both Carter and Obama came to seem so tired, dull, repetitive, scolding, inept and irrelevant. Carter’s poll numbers went up immediately after the malaise speech but retreated after a few days. His words gave him an anti-halo — the shadow of a whiner.

“You can’t castigate the American people,” his vice president, Walter Mondale, told Carter, “or they will turn you off once and for all.”…

“Carter, Clinton and I all have sort of the disease of being policy wonks,” Obama told Ron Suskind in the book “Confidence Men.” He sounded as if he was pleading that he was too smart for the American people.