Obama Good at Becoming Prez, Not at Being Prez

Barack Obama doesn’t look like a unifying centrist anymore. At his suspiciously adoring health care town hall meeting, Obama “seemed like a man long celebrated as being very good at politics, who is finding out day by day that he isn’t,” writes Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal. “He does seem reminiscent of Jimmy Carter, who was brilliant at becoming president, but not being president.”

When the House passed the stimulus with nary a single Republican vote, Democrats seemingly decided they could govern on their own. Obama went from center-left to plain old left. "This, of course, was politics as usual. But in 2008 people voted against politics as usual." And it presaged this disastrously divisive health care debate. Even if Obama wins, “it will be a victory not worth having. It will have cost too much. It has lessened the thing an admired president must have from the people, and that is trust.” (More Peggy Noonan stories.)