I think we could have gotten the novus ordo seclorum message without the perpetual campaign mode.
The deficit and the need to borrow trillions more were all Bush’s fault. Iraq is better, but no need for Obama to point out that Bush, not Obama, was right on the surge, or that his new timetable of withdrawal is in accordance with preexisting Bush-Petraeus-Iraqi understandings.
The pattern after five weeks is depressingly predictable — to the extent Obama continues what Bush did, it is novel (Guantanamo abruptly now meets Geneva standards, two months of novel good news in Iraq allow withdraw, etc.), to the extent he transmogrifies the economy to resemble the European model, it is because he was forced to because of Bush.
Meanwhile, we stay in perpetual campaign mode, as Kerry, Clinton, Biden, Holder, Chu, Gore, etc. nonstop lecture the nation on how bad the last eight years were, how radically enlightened things have become in 40 days, and how we are to equate those who make over $250,000 with “they” who do nefarious things like fly on private jets to super bowl parties or live it up on federal-guaranteed money. (I have a suspicion that Obama, Daschle, Pelosi, Geithner, Holder, etc., prior to their most recent apotheoses, rode on private jets far more than those making 250K.)