All of this has come from a president who is forever bewailing the partisan rancor of a country that, he keeps sadly informing us, has let him down by proving unable to discuss its differences in a civil way.
Obama fanboys often claim that their superhero has been subjected to an unprecedented level of attack and can only take so much. Couldn’t Trump justify his insult-based campaign on that basis? George W. Bush certainly took more than his share of abuse, but to fire back would have struck him as ungentlemanly. He ducked the insults as blithely as he ducked that flying shoe in Iraq.

Besides, usually Obama fans are so desperate to come up with an example of “vitriol” directed against their superhero that they wind up quoting the last four words of a 2009 remark by Rush Limbaugh: “Look, what [Obama] is talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work . . . I hope he fails.”

Limbaugh and Obama have more in common than either would like to admit. Except one of them is supposed to represent the entire country. One of them isn’t supposed to sound like talk radio.