When the Obama Magic Died
by Fouad Ajami (Herbert and Jane Dwight Senior Fellow and cochair, Working Group on Islamism and the International Order)
I think this piece has it about right, this is what many saw – felt but could not get through the roar of the adoring crowd. I was not part of the crowd but I was not part of the resistance. Going back to ’08 I could not stand what I saw as a broken republican candidacy any more than I could vote for Obama. In ’12 I wanted Romney even more than in ’08 but ‘the base’ couldn’t warm to him, the democratic machine worked and the wheels were still on the obfuscation machine run by the media who loved Obama’s ‘message + appearance molds reality’ approach.

Now of course we live with what we have…and the problem is that the neither side can compromise due to ‘true believer ittis’ although both need to. I believe it’s the President who should bow to reality the deepest because his approach and to a significant degree his policies have been shown to be deeply flawed. However the other side ( which is not the republican establishment who are ‘middlemen’ in this epoch) needs to take the momentum of change and shift it onto a more libertarian / non governmental track.

Much of the economic malaise even much of the health care ‘problem’ (which has never been as awful as demagogues make out) revolves around bad tax policy, over regulation and too much state control, not too little. Much of this can be fixed in a reasonable fashion if the ‘sides’ could stomach working together.