Quote of the Day

Fouad Ajami, writing for The Wall Street Journal, about the failed Obama presidency:

• It is in the nature of charisma that it rises out of thin air, out of need and distress, and then dissipates when the magic fails.
• There is a widespread sense of unstated embarrassment that a political majority, if only for a moment, fell for the promise of an untested redeemer—a belief alien to the temperament of this so practical and sober a nation.

Fouad Ajami can really craft a phrase: Charisma "rises out of thin air, out of need and distress, and then dissipates when the magic fails." That, friends, is poetry.