Cat on a Hot Stove

By MAUREEN DOWD, NYT

WASHINGTON — PRESIDENT OBAMA won big.

So why did the moment feel so small?

At his victory scold in the State Dining Room on Thursday, the president who yearned to be transformational stood beneath an oil portrait of Abraham Lincoln and demanded . . . a farm bill. He also couldn’t resist taking a holier-than-thou tone toward his tail-between-their-legs Tea Party foes. He assumed his favorite role of the shining knight hectoring the benighted: Sir Lecturealot.

“All of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict,” he sermonized. (We have met the enemy and they are . . . bloggers?)

Certainly, the House Republicans who held their breath until the country turned blue acted like foolhardy children on what John McCain called “a fool’s errand.”

The country agreed. So it probably wasn’t necessary for papa to preach, overacting the role of weary parent watching the irresponsible kids make their mistakes.

Sir Lecturealot, who hates selling and explaining and negotiating and cajoling and knocking noggins, always manages to convey tedium at the idea that he actually has to persuade people to come along with him, given the fact that he feels he’s doing what’s right.

(More here.)