A confident and clueless president

With Obama, choosing the left path is always right

President Obama returned from his full-time job as the Democratic Party’s fundraiser-in-chief to host today’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. As he winged his way back to Washington from Kansas City aboard Air Force One, the president sat for an interview with editors of The Economist.

The interview was pure Barack Obama, and it revealed him for what he is — an intellectually agile partisan fantasist. According to Mr. Obama, there really haven’t been that many problems, but those we may be experiencing are the fault not of his policies or leadership, but of the fact that he continues to have to contend with dysfunctional, partisan opposition.

According to the president, he’s done a great job both at home and abroad. We’ve got the international balance about right, he suggests, neglecting to mention the glitches we’ve encountered in Ukraine, the Middle East or the South China Sea, and his domestic initiatives have proven remarkably successful. The economy is doing better than anyone might have expected, given the mess he inherited and everyone should be happy except perhaps corporate types, who consider complaining about overregulation and the like part of their jobs.

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