Paul Waldman on how commentators have tried fitting Obama into all kinds of historical analogies — but clear narrative arcs are rare in the messy reality of governing:
In the couple of days between the arrival of that fateful Rolling Stone article and President Barack Obama’s firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, one pundit after another asked if this would be Obama’s “Truman-MacArthur moment.” It was just the latest in a long line of historical analogies into which people attempted to fit Obama. While it would be hard to prove with any certainty, it does seem that this presidency has seen more historical analogizing than those of the past. Why is that?