The Czar Hires the Cossack!
The within-Democratic Party divisiveness of Larry Summers is explained as:
- a byproduct of his personality;
- a habit--learned in graduate school, and before--of overstating points in order to provoke in the belief that he is going to be judged on the smartest thing he says; and
- most important, an American left that does not understand who Obama is.
The Democratic Party--the left especially--chooses somebody without a substantial national political reputation, projects their hopes and their fantasies onto them as a blank canvas, enthusiastically supports their run for president, is then bitterly disappointed, and blames evil advisors who force Obama to listen to Jamie Dimon rather than Elizabeth Warren.
Summers has thus become a convenient bogeyman for Democrats disaffected with the president's performance--a "whipping boy", as Obama told Democratic members of congress--who don't want to admit that the president who is in office is not the idealized president they thought they were working for before the election.
But for Democrats, it is always thus: it was thus for WJC, JEC, and JFK. FDR was an exception, but before him both TWW and SGC were both half-term governors. You have to go back to JB before the Civil War before you find a Democratic election-winning president who had a serious national political reputation before running.
