Barack Obama is one of the most intelligent and eloquent people to grace the White House, which makes his abject failure to tell the story of our era all the more disappointing. Many who were drawn to him in 2008 were dazzled by the power of his words -- his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, his autobiography and subsequent policy book, his insights about race and other divisive issues during the campaign -- and were excited by the prospect of an "educator in chief" who would use the bully pulpit to explain what has happened to the United States in recent decades and to mobilize Americans to do what must be done. But the man who has occupied the Oval Office since January 2009 is someone entirely different -- a man seemingly without a compass, a tactician who veers rightward one day and leftward the next, an inside-the-Beltway deal-maker who does not explain his compromises in light of larger goals. Americans have no idea why we're still in Iraq and Afghanistan, now that Osama...

Shortly after the Democrats' "shellacking" last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. "It's 1994 all over again," he said somewhat gloomily. "Now we move to the center." The supposed parallel between 2010 and 1994 is something of an article of faith in the Obama White House. That's partly because so many of President Barack Obama's current aides worked for Bill Clinton and vividly recall Clinton's own shellacking in 1994. It's also because the Clinton story had a happy ending, at least electorally. The fact that Bill Clinton went on to win re-election is a source of comfort to the current White House as it looks ahead to 2012. From this, many in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton's campaign script -- distancing himself from congressional Democrats, embracing further deficit reduction and deregulation, and seeking guidance from big business. If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama...