An accurate, and quite pointed, line from a friend of a friend: “I heard that Obama just received the Gold Medal at the Olympics for the ‘downhill,’ and how everyone was amazed how someone can go down that fast in such record time . . .” And it is amazing. I remember everyone telling me back in January 2009 that a reputation like Obama’s could not possibly be sustained, that compared to the adulation he was receiving he could not possibly do anything but underperform. But he has not merely underperformed in comparison to an inflated reputation. He has underperformed in comparison to anything a reasonable person would call “success.” I certainly hope Conrad Black is right in what he said in a recent NRO article: “Despite this appalling year of miscues and vaudeville amateurism, hope persists. The president did the right thing in Afghanistan, and will almost certainly, of all ironies, be a successful war president.” But I would also hope that America will, in 2012, choose someone better suited to the overall task of the presidency.

UPDATE: A reader has let me know that the original source of the Olympic-skiing joke was none other than Mitt Romney.