Victor Davis Hanson on the final days of the Obama's White House

A wonderful essay from Victor Davis Hanson:

The Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of Teeth

Posse on the Horizon
The usual rush to the exits from a sinking administration is now ongoing. The only difference in this cycle is that � whereas in the case of the Bush departed who, we were lectured, were rightfully bitter that their genius was not appreciated (e.g., Paul O�Neil, Richard Clarke, Scott McClellan, etc) by the Bush Neanderthals, and were men of conscience who were �blowing the whistle� � we are now told by the New York Times that the Obama parachutists are burned out and �exhausted,� from �blackberrying� all day long!

You see, we should not imagine that these technocratic careerists want to leave the bank before the posse arrives in November, or are moving on to lucrative seven-figure jobs after the requisite administration bumper-sticker billet, but rather after being on the cross suffering for our sins for 18 months, well, can suffer no more for the unworthy. We hoi polloi didn�t turn around the economy, and we couldn�t win the war, and we made them keep Guantanamo open, and we wore them out over healthcare, and we forced more of those once damn Predators and formerly unconstitutional renditions down their throats.

Defeat?
Al Gore just shrieked that his green war is over. He says he lost and is withdrawing from the front. His retreat from his epic Stalingrad-like stand-off had nothing to do with the green equivalent of the ice and cold, the Red Army, or his shaky Eastern European allies, but was simply a crisis of will among the faithful: no one was brave enough to follow Commander Gore into battle anymore.

So Gore did not bring up the recent green-gate email revelations, the weirdly cold weather the last two years in a variety of places (my grape crop is 2-3 weeks late here in once scorching California), the lack of green leadership shown by his splurging on multiple estates all the way to Montecito, or his own public devolution from Nobel Laureate to �sex poodle.� (Green gurus can�t fly on private jets; sorry, they just can�t � at least if they want still to remain green gurus.)

The Thrill Is Gone
Obama himself is not the Obama of 2008 when all America�s problems were declared coterminous with twangy George Bush, and executive governance was defined as sitting at a Senate hearing table in front of blaring cameras and pontificating before squirming witnesses. (Obama, Biden, and Hillary sitting in judgment of Petraeus [who in just three years would now offer them a life-raft for the moment] was one of the more bizarre moments of the last twenty years.)

The tingling legs are gone. The Newsweek editor who declared Obama a god is gone. Heck, there is not even a Newsweek anymore, wrecked on the shoals after sailing blindly to the siren song of hope and change. Even the left is saying if you sing �Close Guantanamo� for years, then, close Guantanamo.

Wonderful stuff -- Hanson also addresses the Republicans in this. Spot On. Hat tip to The Blogmocracy for the link -- some good comments over there...