Reset

In 2008 I got swept up in Obama's rhetoric for change and hope. I wasn't for Obama initially, because I thought he was too inexperienced, but I came around as the campaign progressed.

He's intellectual and he speaks so well! Complex problems, you would suppose, demand complex solutions. He could do that.

Then I said hello to some Tea Party types on the Mall. Tea Baggers. When I was a cop, we talked about dirt baggers. These particular tea baggers quickly offered to stick their "Don't Tread On Me" flagpole up my, well... . Ehh, not too intellectual, that bunch.

Anyway, a year later, where are we except a year recovered from the Decider? (Thank goodness.)

Back to re-set, I think. If Obama was my laptop, I'd turn it off, remove the battery for ten seconds, then put it back in and restart it.

An African-American President, an idealist, a Democrat, a brilliant guy. Which former president is Obama most like? Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK?

It hit me. He's like Woodrow Wilson. An idealist, a Democrat, winner of the nobel peace prize, a war president, a brilliant guy. He expounded the Fourteen Points upon which to end WWI, that would lead to world harmony. (Go ahead, name even one of the Fourteen Points.)

The French leader Georges Clemenceau privately complained that even God Almighty only espoused ten principles. The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles ending WWI, and the League of Nations failed.

Wilson had potential but got nothing done. An historical non-entity.