2008 Called. It Wants to Know What Happened to Barack Obama.S
One of the many little thrills of being a part of the Obama
campaign four years ago was a deep and abiding sense that,
finally, a political leader had come along who could live up to
our highest aspirations. Yes, Obama was cool and played
basketball and was conversant in ironical youth culture, but
when it came down to it, he was overwhelmingly serious. The
other guys were hauling unlicensed plumbers onstage and
suspending their campaign at the drop of a hat, but Obama kept
his eyes on the prize and played the grown-up. Now he's talking
about "Romnesia."  If anything, Obama's 2008 campaign promised a
president who would actively repudiate the frenetic,
aggressively stupid cable-news culture that had engulfed
political reporting. His campaign manager David Plouffe was
openly derisive of Time's Mark Halperin and Politico, the two
chief avatars of empty-calorie bitch-slap politics: "If Politico
and Halperin say we're winning, we're losing." Obama him