There’s still a place in this nation where rooms full of people pay $15,000 a head to listen to President Obama. That place is San Francisco. And, in that place, there are faithful Democrats who agree with Obama’s vision of a nation that can do big things, make great progress, create all the hope and change, and come together forever and ever amen. As long as there’s no one in that country who disagrees with them.

From the pool report on Obama’s fundraiser tonight, he was interrupted by a man yelling, “executive order”:

“Somebody keeps on yelling, ‘executive order,’” Obama said. “I’m going to actually pause on this issue because a lot of people have been saying this lately on every problem, which is just, ‘Sign an executive order and we can pretty much do anything and basically nullify Congress.’” When people started applauding, Obama said, “Wait, wait, wait. Before everybody starts clapping, that’s not how it works. We’ve got this Constitution, we’ve got this whole thing about separation of powers. So there is no short-cut to politics, and there’s no short-cut to democracy. We have to win on the merits of the argument with the American people, as laborious as it seems sometimes…What we have to do is keep on going, keep on pushing, and eventually we move in a better direction.”

Well, at least he can still give a mediocre lecture on the Constitution. Good to know he’ll have a job to go back to after this whole presidency thing.

From a man who finds so very many “short-cuts to democracy,” this is quite a statement, but self-awareness has never been his thing. The soaring Obama philosophy on governing has been thoroughly deflated by Obama’s actual governance. Because none of his failures can ever be his fault, you’re left with the spectacle of a man preaching the power and potency of a federal government given life by his hand and unification by his voice simultaneously complaining about his utter inability to do pretty much anything. If your sweeping plan for an all-powerful federal government doing big things to solve all our problems cannot work if anyone in a country of 300 million disagrees with you and has the temerity to elect a member of Congress, maybe there’s something wrong with your plan.