The Exhausted Obama

There are several excellent points made in this Paul Rahe article from Big Government.

Here are a few:

... For, as I have attempted to document in detail here, here, here, here, here, and here, President Obama is a gentleman, and, as such, he is never unintentionally rude. He is, in fact, a master of the insulting gesture, which he seems to reserve for political opponents, such as Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and for political leaders in countries, such as England, France, Germany, Israel, and Poland, which were closely associated with the United States prior to the Age of Obama.
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Barack Obama has thus far led a charmed life — prep school in Hawaii, Occidental College, Columbia University, Harvard Law School, the Illinois State Senate, the U. S. Senate, the Presidency. He did lose a race for a Congressional seat. But, otherwise, to all appearances, he has never even stumbled.

One fact is emblematic. Obama managed to get elected editor of The Harvard Law Review without having to do what all of his predecessors did — which is to write an article of a quality that would allow it to be published in the journal. With the one exception mentioned above, his political races have been easy. Events consistently broke in his favor. He has never really been tested — until now.

And, of course, now he finds himself in over his head.

Obama’s difficulties are of his own making, and they arise from his failure thus far to recognize what it means to be President of the United States.

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The President of the United States represents the national interest; Congressmen often cater to particular interests. If legislation is left to the latter, principle tends to give way to patronage, and the result can be a profound embarrassment. Like it or not, when he signed the so-called “stimulus” bill, Barack Obama accepted responsibility for the national debt and for the systematic looting embedded in the bill.

Once the looting begins, Congressmen may not be able to help themselves. The current crop needed — Congressmen always need — adult supervision, and Barack Obama offered them none. The same argument applies to the healthcare proposals passed by the House and the Senate, which are, by any system of accounting, a disgrace.
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Now, if I am correct in my interpretation of the character of his exhaustion, even Obama appears to realize that he may not be up to the job. It seems not even to have crossed his mind when he ran for the office and assumed it that with the office would come responsibilities of a sort that had never previously encountered and that he had no particular desire to shoulder.