WRM: Blue Social Model Meltdown

Walter Russell Mead, writing in The American Interest, has a very thoughtful and balanced look at whether the presidency of Barack Obama can be saved. In the process of discussing this issue, he identifies two crucial issues. The President hasn't spoken to the first:

He has said nothing memorable about the crisis that is shaking the global economy and undermining the American middle class. The meltdown of the blue social model is the great and inescapable fact of our time.

Mead's idea of the breakdown of the blue social model is important. He points out that it is happening in Europe as well as in the U.S.

Secondly, Mead sees that Obama's responses have been inappropriately short-sighted:

The White House has responded to strategic challenges at home and abroad with tactical maneuvers. Voters sense that we live in historic times that demand leadership of a different kind.

This article is worth your time and energies.