From Mead's excellent Pretty in Pink? Obama’s Dark Night of the Soul (my bold):
In January 2009, newly inaugurated President Obama believed that the road to success as president lay in pleasing the kind of intellectuals and the high priests of the liberal religion whose esteem he had long sought and pretty much always obtained. He seems to have thought that groups like the editorial board of the New York Times actually represented some serious force in American life. He also seems to have believed that with a few tweaks here and there what passes for political orthodoxy among the intelligentsia of the civil service unions provides a coherent and practical governing philosophy for the United States and that the aspirations of the most legalistically minded of the human rights community describe a feasible path toward world peace. He believed that if we were nicer to the leaders of other countries they would be nicer to us – with one important exception. He believed that if the President of the United States shook his little finger, the Prime Minister of Israel had no choice but to tremble and obey.
Read it all. Link above. I did not vote for the guy - I voted for, and gave max money to, the other, more harmless, doofus.
