An Unpersuasive Post-Mortem

t's easy to understand why Barack Obama's supporters are so sad to see him leave the White House. Although he wasn't quite the liberal Reagan he had hoped to become, he was nonetheless an inspiring (for them, anyway) and often successful champion of progressivism—who's been replaced by Donald Trump. That's gotta hurt.

Still, some of the responses to his departure and the water-colored memories of his time in office have been ridiculous. Perhaps not as ridiculous as the expectations that greeted him eight years ago, but close.

Consider a New Yorker piece about Obama's farewell speech in Chicago. Assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Obama's speaking style, George Packer suggests that "few lines from Barack Obama's Presidential speeches stay in mind. For all of his literary and oratorical gifts, he didn't coin the kinds of phrases that stick with repetition, as if his distaste for politics generally . . . extended to the fashioning of slogans." The analysis is clear-eyed until Packer explains what the president did instead:

He sought to persuade by explaining and reasoning, not by simplifying or dramatizing—a form of respect that the citizenry didn't always deserve.

This aversion to rhetoric, like Obama's aloofness from Congress, is a personal virtue that hurt him politically.