OF COURSE, THERE'S ONE GAPING PROBLEM WITH GETTING RID OF THE MAGIC NEGRO HOOPLA...:

Heckuva Job, Barack (ROSS DOUTHAT, 10/12/09, NY Times)

Here was an opportunity to cut himself free, in a stroke, from the baggage that’s weighed his presidency down — the implausible expectations, the utopian dreams, the messianic hoo-ha.

Here was a place to draw a clean line between himself and all the overzealous Obamaphiles, at home and abroad, who poured their post-Christian, post-Marxist yearnings into the vessel of his 2008 campaign.

Here was a chance to establish himself, definitively, as an American president — too self-confident to accept an unearned accolade, and too instinctively democratic to go along with European humbug.

He didn’t take it. Instead, he took the Nobel Peace Prize.

...once you get past the facade there's only an abyss. People have mistakenly used the "Emperor has no clothes" analogy for the UR. The real point is the clothes have no Emperor.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 12, 2009 12:05 PM