Paul Waldman, making a good point about how Obama's opponents see the president they wish he was:
Pick a contentious issue, and there's an imagined Obama being fashioned. For example, in 2008, gun advocates were told that if the senator from Illinois were elected president, he would immediately send out his jackbooted bureaucratic thugs to begin confiscating weaponry. Upon his inauguration, sales of guns and ammunition soared, as Second Amendment fans stocked up for the inevitable bans. Yet nothing happened... Ascribing the most nefarious of motives to our political opponents is standard fare, of course. But basing your political arguments not on what those opponents have done or have proposed to do but on what they "would" do, frees you from the need to keep a hold on even the slightest tether to reality. Who needs evidence of the other side's evil, when you can just imagine what lies in their hearts?"Posted by Stephen Silver at May 28, 2010 01:56 AM