Look. President Obama has no superpowers. He is a skilled politician who plays the game well. He was reelected by a majority of the voters. Hubris is always a danger among politicians, but I think we can allow him a victory lap or two before worrying that he is creating a dictatorship. The notion that he should—what?—go easy on poor Marco Rubio in order to preserve—what?—the two-party system, I suppose, is ridiculous.

If you asked Newt Gingrich, for example, or any of the other House Republican leaders of recent vintage, whether he would like to “destroy” the Democratic Party, he probably would say, “Heck yes.” And President Obama might well dream of killing off the Republican Party. So what? He’s not going to do it. If we’re going to start being held responsible for our fantasies—even just our political fantasies—as if they were real, we’re all in trouble.