What Happened to Obama’s Passion?

Everyone is talking about this op-ed by Drew Westen in yesterday’s NYT. So good:

The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred. Our brains evolved to “expect” stories with a particular structure, with protagonists and villains, a hill to be climbed or a battle to be fought. Our species existed for more than 100,000 years before the earliest signs of literacy, and another 5,000 years would pass before the majority of humans would know how to read and write.

Obama’s problem is that citizens on the right have never agreed with his policies, and but now, citizens on the left have grown disillusioned with his leadership.

★ Monday, 8 August 2011