The yawning gap of Barack Obama

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Gerard Baker feels the burden of Barack Obama’s collapse. He has to explain to friends and co-workers how Obama could possibly lose the election, being the Lightworker that he is, to a 72-year-old Republican. His British colleagues attribute it to American racism or a beauty contest stemming from Sarah Palin’s entry into the race. Baker patiently explains that the problem is Obama himself...

Even if you think that Americans should want to turn their country into a European-style system, there is a perfectly good reason that you might have grave doubts about Mr Obama.

The essential problem coming to light is a profound disconnect between the Barack Obama of the candidate’s speeches, and the Barack Obama who has actually been in politics for the past decade or so.

Speechmaker Obama has built his campaign on the promise of reform, the need to change the culture of American political life, to take on the special interests that undermine government’s effectiveness and erode trust in the system itself,

Politician Obama rose through a Chicago machine that is notoriously the most corrupt in the country. As David Freddoso writes in a brilliantly cogent and measured book, The Case Against Barack Obama, the angel of deliverance from the old politics functioned like an old-time Democratic pol in Illinois. He refused repeatedly to side with those lonely voices that sought to challenge the old corrupt ways of the ruling party.