Back in the saddle again...

... to respond to none other than Peggy Noonan, who writes in the Wall Street Journal today that Obama is a "snakebit" president, always looking surprised when things go wrong. The President, she argues, lacks ready-made solutions that the Republicans can criticize for being socialist or intending to retroactively abort grandma while riding a gay, Mexican, tax-raising donkey, or something.*

By equating Obama with Jimmy Carter, and then comparing him unfavorably to Ronald Reagan, I think Noonan is using Republican code to say that Obama is weak (perhaps this is the same code where "crime" equals "black?") What is missing here is the bigger picture. When you connect the dots between Carter, Reagan, and Obama, you come up with a different conclusion: the office itself is weak.

It is a powerful institution, the presidency. Presidents have extraordinary unilateral power. At the same time, they are weak within the larger system. Their position is unclear, and in the context of deep and mean partisanship (*to which I am contributing by mocking Republicans throughout this post), presidents end up in a position of party leader. In the Democratic Party, the Democratic President is the official party leader. Perhaps this is all well and good, but it is institutionally weak. As party leader, presidents are expected to hew to established party positions and ideas. This doesn't work so well with most of the actual job description, particularly when it comes to responding to unforeseen situations, running the federal government, and defining the greater goal of national interest.