WHEN YOU RUN AS A DEMIGOD – AT 8:32 A.M. ET:   No one has been sharper in his commentary on Barack Obama than Professor Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University.  Ajami does not like what he sees, and explains why in the Wall Street Journal:

The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon.

Note the phrase, "un-American moment."  Someone had the guts to say it.

In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.

Ouch!  Triple ouch.

The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune...

...In the manner of political redeemers who have marked—and wrecked—the politics of the Arab world and Latin America, Mr. Obama left the crowd to its most precious and volatile asset—its imagination. There was no internal coherence to the coalition that swept him to power. There was cultural "cool" and racial absolution for the white professional classes who were the first to embrace him. There was understandable racial pride on the part of the African-American community that came around to his banners after it ditched the Clinton dynasty.

This is probably the best advance political obit on Obama that we've read.

Mr. Obama himself authored the tale of his own political crisis. He had won an election, but he took it as a plebiscite granting him a writ to remake the basic political compact of this republic.

Exactly right.

Mr. Obama's self-regard, and his reading of his mandate, overwhelmed all restraint...

...better ram down sweeping social programs—a big liberal agenda before the people stirred to life again.

And...

We have had stylish presidents, none more so than JFK. But Kennedy was an ironist and never fell for his own mystique. Mr. Obama's self-regard comes without irony...

...But while the Europeans and Muslim crowds hailed him, they damned his country all the same. For his part, Mr. Obama played along, and in Ankara, Cairo, Paris and Berlin he offered penance aplenty for American ways.

Finally...

There had been that magical moment—the campaign of 2008—and the true believers want to return to it. But reality is merciless. The spell is broken.

Please read the whole piece.  It's well worth it and will make your decade.  Ajami is a particularly brave writer, someone who defies the fashions of the university, not only on the subject of Barack Obama, but in his commentary on the Islamic world.

February 1, 2010