Over on the home page, Pat Caddell, a former top politico in the Carter White House, chats with NRO about the midterm elections. Caddell, a key strategist during Carter’s ’76 presidential campaign, says that hope has consequences:

“President Obama’s undoing may be his disingenuousness,” Caddell says. After campaigning for post-partisanship, Obama, he observes, has lurched without pause to the left. “You can’t get this far from what you promised,” Caddell says, “especially when people invest in hope — you must understand that obligation. The killer in American politics is disappointment. When you are elected on expectations, and you fail to meet them, your decline steepens.”

In 1979, as Carter’s poll numbers slid south amidst a sagging economy, Caddell drafted a memo to the president urging him to recognize that the nation was “deep in crisis.” Gazing upon today’s electoral landscape, Caddell paints an even bleaker picture. “We may be at a pre-revolutionary moment,” he says, unsmiling. “Everything is in motion.” This November, he predicts, “will be more of a national referendum than any [midterm election] since Watergate.”

I’d like to share another point from my conversation with Caddell. Reflecting on the Carter years, Caddell says that when Carter stumbled, the press hounded him. Obama, he says, does not face similar media criticism.

“Obama has an uncontested narrative,” Caddell says. This, he believes, is a short-term advantage for Obama — it enables him to coast unchallenged — but a long-term weakness. “With many members of the press cheerleading for his success, he does not get the same kind of pushback that modern presidents — Reagan, Clinton, Carter — normally received.” Obama, he says, ends up “unaccustomed to adapting and changing along with the country . . . he manages to avoid dealing with political reality but struggles to find a narrative — any narrative — that actually connects.”