The Wizard of Obama

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The Wall Street Journal

 

October 15, 2012, 6:47 p.m. ET

The Wizard of Obama

·By WILLIAM MCGURN

 

The president didn't just lose a debate. He lost an entire image of genius and control.

 

After President Reagan's listless performance in the first presidential debate of 1984 raised speculation that he was too old for the job, the Gipper took command in the second debate. Of his opponent Walter Mondale, Reagan famously said that he wouldn't try to score political points by exploiting his opponent's youth and inexperience.

Perhaps Barack Obama can likewise reassert himself in Tuesday evening's town hall in Long Island. But his problem is this: In Denver he didn't just lose a debate—he lost the carefully cultivated illusion of a larger-than-life figure who was Lincoln and FDR and Moses all wrapped in one.

Mostly this image was the making of his own immodesty, starting the night he clinched the 2008 Democratic nomination. Mr. Obama might have simply declared victory and congratulated Hillary Clinton on a valiant fight. Instead it became the backdrop for one of his more infamous egoisms. History, he said, would look back at his victory as the moment "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."