The Week

• “I had a good time governing,” said Bill Clinton at the presidential press conference he took over. You don’t say . . .

• President Obama has not taken the election well. First he announced his deal with congressional Republicans to extend Bush-era tax rates as if he had just treated with criminals (“It’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers”). Then to sell the deal to balky Democrats he held a joint press conference with Bill Clinton. One felt a twinge of sympathy for Obama as Clinton’s answers spun into an endless monologue. But then, why did Obama give a mike to the most pathologically needy speaker in America? And why did Obama stalk off so gracelessly — and leave Clinton, symbolically at any rate, in charge? It is as though the two Democrats had arranged to give a lesson to Americans on the different ways to degrade the presidency.