Notes &
In a way, it’s more interesting to watch Obama now than it was during the campaign. Back then, he was the great communicator, an inspirational figure promising to take government where it had never been, promising to rescue an electorate sick of partisan divisions and gridlock in the mechanisms of government. It was easy to digest because the public was so eager to move on from what it had. Change seemed the natural order of things. But now, after two years in which the White House has been locked in combat with a GOP that found its voice in its almost unanimous opposition to everything — the stimulus, health care, financial reform — the campaign call for change seems ancient. The president, for all of his success in checking off his to-do list, is now seen as just more of the same by a growing number of voters: a partisan Democrat addicted to big government and big spending.
