Fluttering Into the Windshield

Michael Barone writes about the clash of liberal dreams and public opinion:

In the Bella Center on the south side of Copenhagen and in the Senate chamber on the north side of the Capitol, we’re seeing what happens when liberal dreams collide with American public opinion. It’s like what happens when a butterfly collides with the windshield of a speeding sport utility vehicle. Splat.

The liberal dreams may have seemed, on those nights in Invesco Field and Grant Park, as beautiful as a butterfly. But they are still subject to the merciless laws of political physics.

Eleven months ago, this did not seem inevitable. It was widely supposed that economic distress would increase America’s appetite for big-government measures to restrict carbon dioxide emissions and control the provision of health care. Especially when a young, dynamic president employed his oratorical gifts to transcend, as he put it, old ideological and partisan divisions.

Barack Obama, who seemed so confident of his powers as he prepared for his inauguration, evidently believed that he could persuade Americans to support left-of-center policies that they had never favored before.

That last paragraph reminded me of a piece I wrote in January: Obama Shocked to Discover He Has No Actual Magical Powers.

You can read the rest of Barone's column at the link. Always good stuff.