Weary, for instance, of being ignored by other world powers, of being played for a fool by Vladimir Putin, of having red lines crossed with disdain by murdering tyrants, of finding out that al Qaeda, described as dead just a few news cycles earlier, has grown a new and more dangerous head.

Or perhaps war weariness hadn’t been for a while as deep or as wide as was thought. People were weary of war in 2006, the worst year in Iraq until recently, and made their views known in the 2006 midterms. It was a well-deserved rout for a president and his party, who lost control of both houses of Congress two years after a realignment of sorts in their favor seemed imminent.

The election of 2006 was indeed a war-weary election, but two years later a great deal had changed. George W. Bush had sacked his old team and old policy, pushed through the surge, and by the end of 2007 Sunni and Shia were fighting alongside Americans to push al Qaeda out of their country. Gen. David Petraeus was a national hero, and super-hawk John McCain was toe-to-toe with Barack Obama coming out of the party conventions, and starting to open a lead.