Ezra Klein: "Obama’s Flunking Economy: The Real Cause"

Alex Wong/Getty Images-Lawrence Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Washington, D.C., December 2011

Ezra Klein (NY Review of Books):

At the end of the book, Suskind is sitting in the White House with Obama. “Leadership in this office is not a matter of you being confident,” the President reflects. “Leadership in this office is a matter of helping the American people feel confident.”

But the president needs to do more than lead. He needs to govern. And when he has so convinced the American people of his leadership that their expectations for his term far exceed his—or anyone’s—capacity to govern, disappointment results. That’s when they go looking for another confidence man—one whose promises aren’t sullied by the compromises and concession made in the effort to deliver results—and the cycle begins anew. MORE...