Neal Gabler says that, like most liberals, Obama resists entering the darkened theater that Reagan mastered.
Most people seem to agree that the single greatest mystery of the Obama presidency is how a candidate who stoked hope, raised expectations, and stirred tens of millions of Americans to embrace change became a president who banked the fires of hope, lowered expectations, and dampened the belief of tens of millions of Americans that anything in the country could be changed. Theories, of course, abound: that Barack Obama, like John F. Kennedy before him, ran as an idealist but had always intended to govern as a pragmatist; that the toxic political environment prevented him from accomplishing the magnitude of change his supporters wanted; that the problems he inherited from Bush were simply too overwhelming; that in fighting for health-care reform he chose the wrong battle; that the public itself always demands change during an election only to be terrified of it afterward; and, last but not least, that Democrats are just plain doomed.
