Obama's Vanishing 'competence'

Obama came to the White House with a carefully cultivated image for almost preternatural competence — an image no one esteemed more highly than he did. “I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” he had told his campaign staff. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.”
He may still believe it, writes Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe, but most Americans no longer do. "The Obama administration hasn’t been distinguished by cool, cerebral, sure-footed professionalism, but by something closer to amateur hour."    [Read it all]          [BJS]