"Democracy came into the Western World to the tune of sweet, soft music," wrote H.L. Mencken as the opening to his Notes on Democracy. With the ascent of Barack Obama, the music was triumphant and loud, captivating the entire center-left media establishment, the nation’s youth, the official counterculture, the legions of professional victimologists, the mainstream antiwar movement, the civil bureaucracy, the legal profession, the unions, most traditional Democrats and the young and old members of American academia. For the lion’s share of Obama’s loyal supporters, his ascent to the throne marked something nearly as significant as the entrance of democracy itself onto the Western scene. It signaled a turning point to one day be listed on a short list of American victories for the modern world – a watershed to appear on timelines featuring the Emancipation Proclamation, women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights movement. Meanwhile, although in Mencken’s account "there was, at the start, no harsh bawling from below" when democracy made its appearance, Obama was met early on by loud protest from much of the grassroots right, much of which had backed Bush until the twilight of his own reign of power and who agreed with Obama’s supporters that the man represented a great shift in American governance, only disagreeing on whether this dramatic transformation was one to be celebrated rather than feared.

A year has passed since the maligned and lame-duck Bush presidency gave way to the hope and change of the Obama administration. For the first couple months last year, criticism of Obama was regarded as premature. We had to give him the benefit of the doubt for the obligatory although arbitrary 100 days. When that period passed, Obama was shielded from criticism on the grounds that his predecessor had made such a disastrous mess of domestic and foreign policy that the new president would need yet more time before he could be fairly evaluated. That isolation from criticism did give way eventually, and few today have the temerity to insist that we delay our scrutiny until the president is reelected in 2012.

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