Control Freaks

It’s a lot easier getting into a cultural morass than getting out of one. Getting in feels effortless; getting out feels like work. Getting in feels like fun; getting out feels like a slog.

We got into our current cultural morass when we allowed the 1960s counterculture to transform traditional American values into a more therapeutically-correct alternative.

In the name of mental health we made virtue into vice and vice into virtue. 

More and more people are recognizing this for the folly that it was. Yet, we are still suffering its effects.

Since old-style therapy bears a considerable responsibility for the problem, it is fitting that new therapists, armed with cognitive psychology, have been leading us out of it.

Any system of classical ethics will grant considerable importance to self-control. The therapy culture rejected this precept and persuaded far too many people that self-control was the royal road to mental illness and general uptightness.

Reviewing Roy Baumeister and John Tierney’s new book on self-control Harvard Professor Steven Pinker makes the salient point: “ …  the very idea of self-­control has acquired a musty Victorian odor. The Google Books Ngram Viewer shows that the phrase rose in popularity through the 19th century but began to free fall around 1920 and cratered in the 1960s, the era of doing your own thing, letting it all hang out and taking a walk on the wild side. Your problem was no longer that you were profligate or dissolute, but that you were uptight, repressed, neurotic, obsessive-compulsive or fixated at the anal stage of psychosexual development.”

In other terms, when you meet someone who is highly disciplined and organized, our culture will tell you to label him a control freak.

Baumeister and Tierney entitle their book: Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. As Pinker explains, they base their title’s value judgment on experiments that have shown self-control to be one of the best predictors of success in life.

You may know of the famous marshmallow experiment: “In experiments beginning in the late 1960s, the psychologist Walter Mischel tormented preschoolers with the agonizing choice of one marshmallow now or two marshmallows 15 minutes from now. When he followed up decades later, he found that the 4-year-olds who waited for two marshmallows turned into adults who were better adjusted, were less likely to abuse drugs, had higher self-esteem, had better relationships, were better at handling stress, obtained higher degrees and earned more money.”

One might call it deferred gratification, but it is really a question of calculating risk versus reward, making a rational decision, and following that decision.

Therapists have made it more difficult to acquire self-control because of the way they have defined the problem. They have persuaded us that the mind in engaged in a permanent struggle between unruly impulses and mental willpower.

Pinker describes how we have learned to think the problem: “When we fight an urge, it feels like a strenuous effort, as if there were a homunculus in the head that physically impinged on a persistent antagonist. We speak of exerting will power, of forcing ourselves to go to work, of restraining ourselves and of controlling our temper, as if it were an unruly dog.”

I will not contest that some people feel what they feel. I will note that this description of a mental conflict between impulse and willpower comes down to us from Freud, among others. For most of us it feels like the right way to analyze the problem.

Beyond its being a theory, it is also a narrative. And it is designed to undermine your self-control and your good character.

Ostensibly, therapy pretends to allow you to gain control of your impulses by understanding where they come from and what they mean. This is a ruse, a sop to bourgeois sensibilities.

In truth, once therapy became a culture its emphasis shifted markedly.

If you convince people, as Freud and the therapy culture did, that we are engaged in a futile struggle against powerful impulses, then it is not too difficult to convince them to give in to their impulses.

Then, you can explain that those who give their impulses freer reign will be healthier than those who keep their impulses and emotions bottled up. From talk shows to the movie of the week, this message is pervasive in our culture.

It helps if you add that our impulses have only taken on a negative value because we are trying to control them. Then you will have set people on a permanent path to self-indulgence.

From there the therapy culture declares that people with powerful feelings are superior to those whose feelings are so weak that they are easy to control. 

Then, it is not only morally defensible to launch into intemperate rants; it becomes a sign of superiority.

When you lose control you will see it as a sign that you feel very strongly that you are right. You will reject the old way of thinking where it was a sign of weak willpower, an inability to control yourself.

Building self-control is like building character. You do it one step at a time. It requires work and effort, not least because important forces in the culture are militating against it.

But it is important to emphasize that once you develop the habits of self-discipline and self-control, they will not feel like a constant struggle against an impulse to self-indulgence, but they will feel natural and normal.

Experimenters have tried this out by using college students as subjects. They have taught the students to exercise self-control in small tasks, the better to allow them to develop the “muscle” or the habit that will give them greater self-control in larger tasks. They want to make self-control feel familiar and comfortable.

Pinker summarizes: “Immediately after students engage in a task that requires them to control their impulses — resisting cookies while hungry, tracking a boring display while ignoring a comedy video, writing down their thoughts without thinking about a polar bear or suppressing their emotions while watching the scene in "Terms of Endearment" in which a dying Debra Winger says goodbye to her children — they show lapses in a subsequent task that also requires an exercise of willpower, like solving difficult puzzles, squeezing a handgrip, stifling sexual or violent thoughts and keeping their payment for participating in the study rather than immediately blowing it on Doritos.”

He continues: “ … self-control, though almost certainly heritable in part, can be toned up by exercising it. He enrolled students in regimens that required them to keep track of their eating, exercise regularly, use a mouse with their weaker hand or (one that really gave them a workout) speak in complete sentences and without swearing. After several weeks, the students were more resistant to ego depletion in the lab and showed greater self-control in their lives. They smoked, drank and snacked less, watched less television, studied more and washed more dishes.”

And also: “Build up its strength, the authors suggest, with small but regular exercises, like tidiness and good posture. Don’t try to tame every bad habit at once. Watch for symptoms of ego fatigue, because in that recovery period you are especially likely to blow your stack, [and] your budget ….”

Et Tu, Frank Rich

Frank Rich has not just arrived at the party. He stated his disappointment in Barack Obama two months ago. Link here.

This week the administration tried its hand at scheduling the president’s upcoming address to a joint session of Congress. It told House Speaker Boehner that the president wanted to give the speech on Wednesday, even though the date conflicted with a long scheduled Republican presidential debate.

Speaker Boehner balked at the proposal and the administration had to accept another date.

Speaking with Piers Morgan, Rich commented: “I think it's amateur night….You'd think that the White House would have figured out this [Republican] debate was going on, you know. It's not being held on a public access channel...it really makes you wonder who is in charge."

After agreeing with Morgan that Obama came off looking “weak,” Rich added: “That speech really better be dynamite….Because after all this buildup and nonsense and farce, if he, you know, delivers a mouse, particularly for you think of all the Americans who are suffering from unemployment, he's got a bigger problem than he started with."

As for his judgment of the Obama administration, Rich does not pull his punches: “This has been a very scattered administration…. I don’t know what the problem has been. But it’s really been a rhetorical and in some ways a substantive failure.

Who's at Fault: Government or the Markets

The debate has been raging for a few years now. The stakes are enormous, so it will continue to rage.

Economists, in particular, and pundits, in general, have been debating whether the fault for our current financial difficulties lies with the markets or with the government.

The lessons we draw from the current crisis will be used to solve or to aggravate the next crisis.

Since Democrats, and many people who are not Democrats, believe that the New Deal solved the Great Depression, the current administration, along with an important segment of educated opinion, believes that government spending will get us out of our Great Recession.

If we as a nation conclude that government is the problem, not the solution, we will seek out  market-based solutions.

Looking to the markets means relying on individual initiative and enterprise.

This morning Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker makes the case for the markets. In his view government meddling in the markets produced and exacerbated the crisis. The fault lay in the unwillingness of government bureaucrats to trust the markets.

In Becker’s words:  “Although many banks did perform poorly, government behavior also contributed to and prolonged the crisis. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates artificially low in the years leading up to the crisis. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two quasi-government institutions, used strong backing from influential members of Congress to encourage irresponsible mortgages that required little down payment, as well as low interest rates for households with poor credit and low and erratic incomes. Regulators who could have reined in banks instead became cheerleaders for the banks.”

And then, the government leaders “misdiagnosed” the problem and prescribed more, not less, government intervention.

Becker writes: “The misdiagnosis of widespread market failure led congressional leaders, after the 2008 election, to propose radical changes in financial institutions and, more generally, much wider regulation and government control of companies and consumer behavior. They proposed higher taxes on upper-income families and businesses, and extensive controls over executive pay, as they bashed ‘billionaire’ businessmen with private planes and expensive lifestyles. These political leaders wanted to reformulate antitrust policies away from efficiency, slow the movement by the U.S. toward freer trade, add many additional regulations in the medical-care sector, levy big taxes on energy emissions, and cut opportunities to drill for oil and other fossil fuels.”

And also: “Congress did manage to pass badly designed laws concerning financial markets, consumer protection and medical care. Although regulatory discretion failed leading up to the crisis, Congress nevertheless added to the number and diversity of federal regulations as well as to the discretion of regulators. These laws and the continuing calls for additional regulations and taxes have broadened the uncertainty about the economic environment facing businesses and consumers. This uncertainty decreased the incentives to invest in long-lived producer and consumer goods. Particularly discouraged was the creation of small businesses, which are a major source of new hires.”

In another world, it would be called doubling down on failure.

David Brooks offers slightly different, and complementary, take on the problem. He argues, cogently and correctly, that the government regulation produces the problems that it is designed to control.

More regulation means more distrust, both of the markets and of individuals. And more regulation presupposes that without such regulations, evil human impulses would have free reign.  In truth, excessive regulation fosters the reign of evil impulses.

If government trusted people more, people would be more inclined to behave better.

Brooks says that the Republican, in particular, the Rick Perry message, of smaller government sees human beings as prone to commit virtue.

In his words: “America became great, they [Perry Republicans] explain, because its citizens possessed certain vigorous virtues: self-reliance, personal responsibility, industriousness and a passion for freedom.

“But, over the years, government has grown and undermined these virtues. Wall Street financiers no longer have to behave prudently because they know government will bail them out. Middle-class families no longer have to practice thrift because they know they can use government to force future generations to pay for their retirements. Dads no longer have to marry the women they impregnate because government will step in and provide support.

“Moreover, a growing government sucked resources away from the most productive parts of the economy — innovators, entrepreneurs and workers — and redirected it to the most politically connected parts. The byzantine tax code and regulatory state has clogged the arteries of American dynamism.”

To be brief, government is the problem that it is trying to solve. When government steps in, human beings feel relieved of the responsibility to act virtuously. If the government takes them for incipient criminals, they tend to fulfill the cultural expectations. They know that if they fail the government has their backs.

If government relieves people of their personal moral responsibility, and if it then uses the situation it has helped produce to enhance its own power, then it is engaged in a monumental failure to take responsibility.  

Where Becker wants the government to get out of the way, Brooks tempers his view—he’s writing in the New York Times—by calling for more big government. Specifically, he wants us to improve our educational system. Hopefully, he is not proposing that more government spending on education will produce better test scores. We should all know by now that the problem does not involve the amount of money, but the way teaching is conducted.

Worse yet, government maintains a near monopoly over teaching, one that immunizes it from being held to account for its failures.

Since students are going back to school and to college this week educators and pundits have been producing articles showing that we are not doing a very good job educating American children.

In particular,  American children cannot compete in mathematics. At a time when many American jobs are going unfilled because employers cannot find people with the required math and technical skills, it is worth taking a look at how we educate our children.

We should ask whether schools are preparing children to function in the marketplace, to compete for jobs and success, or to be community organizers, social workers, and bureaucrats?

Are schools more interested in teaching math and science or do they care more about being agents of therapeutic change, teaching self-esteem?

Given the current pedagogical ideology, one wonders how schools could possibly teach math. If it’s all about how you feel, if no one is better than anyone else, and if no one’s answers are better than anyone else’s you cannot teach math.

Mathematics has right and wrong answers; it does not care about whether or not your feelings get hurt by getting it wrong. Mathematics involves objective realities, and these cannot co-exist or even thrive in a world where teachers are like Nannies.

Mathematics requires strict discipline and a lot of hard work. It is not the place where you are going to get in touch with your feelings and develop your creativity.

Mathematics is also a field where you can build a real sense of achievement because you know that there are higher truths than your teacher’s trendy ideology. 

Eric Hanushek and Paul Peterson from Stanford University and the Hoover Institutions bring us the bad news: “So maybe it is more than a mere coincidence that 32 percent of U.S. public and private-school students in the class of 2011 are deemed proficient in mathematics, placing the United States 32nd among the 65 nations that participated in the latest international tests administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The United States ranks between Portugal and Italy and far behind South Korea, Finland, Canada, and the Netherlands, to say nothing of the city of Shanghai, with its 75 percent proficiency rate.”

Of course, the children who are out-competing our children did not merely suffer a rigorously disciplined classroom environment. They also had Tiger Moms.

They were taught discipline and hard work. They were not encouraged to be popular or to go out and learn the fine art of having fun. They were not encouraged to express themselves in their work. They knew that you will never learn algebra if you think that the classroom is a place where you can learn to express your personal feelings without being judged.

Walter Russell Mead wrote the follow admonition to college students last year. “Your competition isn’t sitting in the next library carrel.  Your competition is in China and India – and your competition isn’t hanging out at frat parties or sitting around watching sitcoms with dorm-mates.  It isn’t getting stoned and it isn’t putting its energy into chasing the opposite (or apposite) sex.  Your competition isn’t taking lots of courses on gender studies; it isn’t majoring in ethnic studies, or (unless it is planning to go into movie making) the history of film.”

Mead seems to feel that college students are suffering from their belief in credentialism. They imagine that once they get a degree from a prestigious institution, they will naturally become successful. Don’t degrees put you on the road to success?

Better yet, they do not have to work too hard to get the degree. It’s very difficult to flunk out of college. Grade inflation offers everyone a sterling transcript. They can sail through college without working too hard, developing good character, or acquiring marketable skills.

They are, Mead suggests, in for a very rude awakening. 

Do You Believe in Science?

The late Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize for physics. He is as good an authority as any on what science is and what it isn’t.

Nowadays, for reasons that escape easy comprehension, certain Republican candidates are being attacked for not believing in science. We recall—even though it is painful to think of it—that Al Gore spends much of his time these days railing against those who do not believe that anthropogenic global warming (AGM) is an absolute scientific fact.

Gore refuses to allow anyone to question it or to disagree with his opinion. None dare call it a liberal attitude. It smacks of extremism.

Gore is using “science” as a cudgel to shut off debate and to recruit followers to his maniacal cult.

I trust that everyone has noticed that the Gore version of science has nothing to do with scientific fact. Scientists are humble; they are in awe of nature; they abhor fanaticism; they know that today’s fact may be tomorrow’s fiction.

Only religious dogma lays claim to the kind of absolute certainty that Al Gore attributes to “science.” AGM is religious dogma masquerading as science.

Today, blogger John Althouse Cohen has offered us a guide through this thicket. He quotes a text Richard Feynman wrote in his book, The Meaning of it All. In it Feynman addressed  the question of scientific certainty and uncertainty.

In Feynman’s words: “It is necessary and true that all of the things we say in science, all of the conclusions, are uncertain, because they are only conclusions. They are guesses as to what is going to happen, and you cannot know what will happen, because you have not made the most complete experiments. . . .”

“Scientists, therefore, are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. All scientific knowledge is uncertain. This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important. I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences. I believe that to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to permit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right. Otherwise, if you have made up your mind already, you might not solve it.

“So what we call scientific knowledge today is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty. Some of them are most unsure; some of them are nearly sure; but none is absolutely certain. Scientists are used to this. We know that it is consistent to be able to live and not know. Some people say, ’How can you live without knowing?’ I do not know what they mean. I always live without knowing.”

If we compare the attitude of someone who knows science with the increasing hysterical rants of Al Gore and we will have learned something valuable.

Falling In and Out of Love

Falling in love is easy. Falling out of love is hard.

Falling in love can happen in an instant. Falling out of love takes time.

Falling in love can feel like spontaneous combustion. Falling out of love feels like a slow death.

Falling in love feels effortless. Falling out of love takes work.

Then again, staying in love takes work too.

Sometimes love happens quickly and effortlessly. It feels like something that is happening to you, that overpowers your will. It does not feel like something you can make happen or even something that you can earn.

Love finds you, at times, when you are least ready for it. If you don’t want it to sneak off into the night, you will have to care for it. Almost as much as you will have to care for the one you love. 

Many people know what they should do to cultivate love. Fewer actually do it.

Perhaps they are suffering from the mistaken belief that love means never having to say you’re sorry.

Once you fall in love, how do you stay in love?

Conventional wisdom tells us that spontaneous romantic gestures nourish love. 

The best ones are small, kind, and thoughtful.

A small gift offered for no special reason can be more meaningful than an expensive display of affection.

This does not imply that you can get away with forgetting birthdays and anniversaries, or even Valentine’s Day. It does imply that if you only turn them on for special occasions, your expressions of affection will lack sincerity.

Men would do well to understand the difference between a gift that expresses love and one that attempts to purchase love.

Men should understand that a good gift is something she wants. Not something he wants her to have or something she needs. If it’s her favorite perfume or flowers or style of earrings, his gift will be showing that he has thought about what would make her happy.

If he has to ask her what she wants, the gift becomes more of a duty performed grudgingly than an expression of love given freely.

If he has to ask what she wants, that also means that he does not know who she is.

Disappointing gifts are gifts that could have been given to anyone. This applies to men and to women, equally.

If she loves pink roses and he buys her gardenias, he has a problem.

If she offers him an article of clothing that he does not like and would never wear she is saying that she would rather he be someone else.

Knowing how to give gifts—something that women seem instinctively to know and that men seem instinctively not to understand— makes love last.

In our therapy-addled age we imagine that we need but have the right feelings and to express them fulsomely.

Therapy notwithstanding, talk is cheap. Giving a gift sustains love much better than grand gestures of affection.

Gift-giving requires a sustained effort. It speaks louder than words.

This does not mean that gift-giving is a mechanical process. It takes a lot of hard work to make something feel spontaneous.

When it comes to gifts, it is always better to do it yourself. If you enlist your secretary, your wife will know that you didn’t choose it yourself. I guarantee it.

Often, the best gifts are not objects, but memorable experiences. Women especially like to be taken places.  Perhaps it’s a vestige of a time when they spent most of their time at home, but women like to be taken out and treated as special. They like it even more when a man plans the event. It’s better if he himself chooses an event that she would like. It’s best if he tries to like it himself.

If he makes her feel like he is doing her a large favor, he loses all credit for his affectionate gesture. If he dismisses an event that she loves, she will feel that he is dismissing her.

Memorable experiences sustain love.

Clearly, gift-giving creates debts. No one should ever be reminded of it. Failing to express gratitude and to reciprocate a gift damages the bonds that connect couples.  

If he tells her that she owes him he is assuming that she does not understand the most elementary form of decorum. She will rightfully feel insulted.

When you give a gift, never ask for anything in return.

If nothing is given in return, however, your love will diminish.

Gift-giving done right is work. It does not feel spontaneous. It requires thought, planning, and preparation. If he does not love her enough to put some time into making an event memorable for her, or to finding just the right gift, then she will find other ways to make him pay.

Offering the right gift to the right person at the right time and place helps sustain love.

Love is not sustained by intense feelings. It is sustained by gestures that make clear that you do not take the other person to be just anyone. It’s more about who than about what or how or why.

As we learned from the wonderful book, Stop Calling Him Honey, by Julienne Davis and Maggie Arana, you can sustain love and nourish desire by calling your beloved by his or her proper name.

Terms of endearment diminish love.

Better Jack or Jill than honey or snookums…..

It’s similar to buying the right gift. The right gift shows that you have not just bought any old gift that you could give to any old person. Anyone can be “darling,” but only Clarissa is Clarissa.

Identifying the person by name and by fitting the gift to the person sustain love.

When people say that they want to be loved for who they are, I think that they are more interested in knowing that their lovers know who they are.

That does not imply that you need love someone for his or her personality or wit or flair. It does imply that you had best not, in a moment of passion, call Stephanie … Pearl.

Of course, it takes more than gifts and nights out on the town to keep love alive.

If you forget your anniversary you will damage your love, but if you remember it with flowers and chocolates and a lovely dinner, that does not buy you an indulgence for your other faults, flaws, and foibles.

Love thrives in the right kind of culture. It withers away and dies in the wrong culture.

Singular events and spontaneous gestures help keep love alive. But they are not the foundation for long lasting love.

Shared routines, routines that happen in the same way every day, forge bonds of love and affection. Knowing that another person will make a consistent effort to join you for breakfast or dinner provides feelings of security.

To sustain love you must become integral to each other’s routines.

Since love happens spontaneously, people often believe that routines, to say nothing of decorum and propriety are the enemies of love.

They are wrong.

Love does not excuse your derelictions of duty and your irresponsible behavior.

Every time she wonders whether or not he will do what he said he’d do—whether it involves picking up the dry cleaning or picking up the children after school—a little of her love dies.

Love needs trust. It’s a vital need. You might fall in love with someone who is not trustworthy, but you are not likely to remain in love for very long.

If you try to sustain a passion for someone who is untrustworthy you will increasingly feel that you are in it alone. You might convince yourself that his behavior is a test of your love, that it is trying to see whether you will love him unconditionally. You would be wrong to do so.

Unconditional love is doomed love.

Love is a sacred trust. It is given, not taken. It is cherished, not advertised.

Intimacy should remain private and secret. Public displays of affection produce embarrassment.  Over time this will kill love.

Love needs confidence. You are not going to confide for long in someone in whom you lack confidence.

Yet, you should not confiding too much or of reveal too much of what is worst about you.

Complete openness and honesty, the kind that claims that “we have no secrets from each other” is impossible. If you proclaim that you cannot keep any secrets from your lover, what makes her think that you will not betray her secrets, too.

Love allows you to share problems and difficulties, but it works best when lovers see each other in their best light.

It is impossible to sustain love without allowing the other person to see your faults. If that’s all or most of what they see, your love is not going to make it through the winter.

And you will not be able to sustain love for someone who loves you but doesn’t really like you.

It’s not how much or how deeply or how madly you love. It’s really about how good your character is.

You cannot love a person of poor or weak character for very long.

Love is forgiving. It lets you get away with errors and mistakes. It might even lull you into complacency.

Love is forgiving until it isn’t. At that point, at the moment of truth, the accounts will come due, and her love will die.

When that happens, your love can turn into a fever, but it will not really be love any longer. Like the tango, it takes two to love.

American Unexceptionalism

Today’s must-read column comes to us from Shelby Steele.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal Steele wants us to understand that there is more to the Obama presidency than ineptitude and incompetence. 

Obama’s behavior and actions are not incoherent or disorganized. They are defined by an ideology that has become a leftist mindset.

The mindset reflects the ideology that came of age during the Vietnam War and that founded that era’s counterculture.

Steele explains: “Yet there is something more than inexperience or lack of character that defines this presidency: Mr. Obama came of age in a bubble of post-'60s liberalism that conditioned him to be an adversary of American exceptionalism. In this liberalism America's exceptional status in the world follows from a bargain with the devil—an indulgence in militarism, racism, sexism, corporate greed, and environmental disregard as the means to a broad economic, military, and even cultural supremacy in the world. And therefore America's greatness is as much the fruit of evil as of a devotion to freedom.”

Whether he knows it or not, Obama suffers from a habit of leftist thought that sees American greatness and exceptionalism as the products of sin and corruption. Steele doesn’t say so, but this thought is theologically-based.

In his, more secular terms: “It is a left that has no more fervent mission than to recast our greatness as the product of racism, imperialism and unbridled capitalism.”

The left wants to correct this malady by showing us the right way to atone for our sins. Steele suggests that it does so by making “a virtue of decline.”

If your gains were ill-gotten, the product of corrupt behavior, the first step toward redemption is renouncing them.

We now witness guilt-ridden billionaires railing about how little they are taxed. And we see them trying to find the way to salvation by giving it all to charity.

Worse yet, we have seen an administration that began its tenure by apologizing for America and that has continued by refusing to take the lead in international affairs.

The left sees decline as a good thing because it feels like justice. Mindlessly, it wants to eliminate all hierarchical distinctions and make everyone everywhere feel like equals.

At that point everyone will like everyone else and the kingdom of peace and justice will descend on earth.

Importantly, Steele points out that a leader who believes that the nation is exceptional must have confidence in the American people. And vice versa. An exceptional country must have been built by exceptional people. A corrupt, venal enterprise could only have come into being through the efforts of sinners.

An exceptional people do great things when they are allowed to exercise freedom and initiative. For this the government has to trust the people and get out of the way.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration is afflicted with habits of thought that think first about how to control and regulate evil impulses. The administration is afraid of the American people.

Steele writes: “As a president, Barack Obama has been a force for mediocrity. He has banked more on the hopeless interventions of government than on the exceptionalism of the people. His greatest weakness as a president is a limp confidence in his countrymen. He is afraid to ask difficult things of them.”