Third, Obama will benefit if there now is less of what the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called “the leakage of reality” from public life. Obama seems to have been disoriented by a false sense of having achieved unchallengeable political supremacy. Now there may be a post-Massachusetts respite from the mainstream media’s torrent of obituaries for conservatism, including tedious analyses of the “crisis of the Republican Party.”…
If Obama can now resist the temptation of faux populism, if he does not rage, like Lear on the heath, against banks, he can be what Americans, eager for adult supervision, elected him to be: a prudent grown-up. For this elegant and intelligent man to suddenly discover his inner William Jennings Bryan (“You shall not crucify America upon a cross of credit-default swaps”) would be akin to Fred Astaire donning coveralls and clodhoppers.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member