An analysis of Obama

Walter Russell Mead:

The President looks like a man who is ridden by events; at just the moment when the nation craves a strong leader, the President looks weak, dodgy, uncertain.  The contrast with the inflated hopes that an untested and inexperienced Senator Obama did so much to build up is crippling.  Obama has fallen so far precisely because he and his supporters so hugely oversold him.

He once despised Bill Clinton for the comprising and triangulating that got him through his eight years.  President Obama was going to do it differently: he was going to fight and win.

Perhaps he will; politics is full of surprises and it is still almost a year and a half until the election.  But at the moment the President seems to be envying Clinton’s talents and attempting to emulate rather than scorn them.  From anti-Clinton to aspiring Clinton is a long fall and it can’t be much fun.