OUR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT:

On Election Day, the Washington Post published a useful effort to explain the decline in Obama's popularity from his re-election in 2012 to the midterms. To those who aren't political junkies, the collapse is a bit of a mystery, as the president is pretty much the same man as the one who defeated a quite capable Mitt Romney two years ago. By then he had long been stripped any magical "hope and change" properties voters might have ascribed to him in 2008. Instead he campaigned with his limitations known: a good orator, not especially deft at managing the power levers of the presidency, reluctant to pick fights, insular in his choice of advisors, moderate, and prone to compromise. A liberal Republican perhaps, in a multicultural, third-worldist packaging?

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