“I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace, harmony and some post-partisan era,” the president noted last night.
Actually, Mr. President, that’s exactly what you thought.
Upon securing the Democratic nomination he said the following: “Generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment …the rise of the oceans began to slow.”
At the Brandenburg Gate, he invoked the glamour of John Kennedy with the foreign policy street cred of Ronald Reagan, even though he had not yet been elected. He billed himself as the post-racial, post-partisan president. The past be damned, he came to save us from ourselves and begin anew.
The crème-de-la-crème? Critiquing Obama’s Cairo speech last June, the dean of the adoring press, Newsweek’s Evan Thomas, said the following: “Reagan was all about America ... Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God."
It’s an image the president fostered, and which some in the press (Chris Matthews’s lightning bolt) eagerly lapped up. Last night he descended from the Heavens, and was made man; an articulate, combative, cocky man whose delivery was peppered with too many casual asides, like Clooney’s performance in Oceans’ 13.
The failure of health care reform, cap-and-trade and the jobs’ stimulus bill would have any mere mortal realizing government’s role is to encourage business, markets and investment; not be the business, market and investments. We’re not looking for a miracle; just for Washington to get out of the way and let us do what we do best. If that were to happen, a miracle it might actually be.