True.

and whose primary thrill is dressing up in tuxedos and going into hotel ballrooms to swoon with adoration for the President like he's a rock star.  

Glenn makes excellent points - when does he not?  He's been writing more posts lately about the pernicious effects not just of blind loyalty, but of winning for its own sake, that I think have been particularly important from the big-picture perspective of who we are as a people and a nation, and where we're headed - and where it is we want to go.  I think he is truly offended by the takeover of personality trumping anything else, and the ease with which people throw their own principles under the bus in order not to be left sitting at the loser kids' table.  I mean, why be relegated to the table in the cafeteria that smells like hundred-year old food, when you can flit and flutter among the perfumed glitterati - if all it takes is leaving your soul in a box under your bed?

Somehow, I think the collective development of a growing segment of the electorate has arrested at about the junior high/middle school level - which does not bode well for evolving and growing and learning the lessons that are right in front of us.  

Are we actually at the point for some people -- as we seem to be -- where a person is not only obligated to assume the core goodness of Obama but also agree and affirm that, a mere nine months into his presidency, he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?   That's now a mandated belief?  In order to be a good, patriotic citizen and a decent human being, that's the requirement one has to fulfill?  If that became the prevailing view, wouldn't the distinction Ambinder highlighted between the Bush and Obama years cease to exist?

In the year that you are awarded a peace prize, including the Nobel, you should not be ESCALATING a war.

This is a damned simple concept.

Of course, later on in anther time, you may achieve or act in a way that earns you a Peace Prize.

I hardly say it is forever, but it is well, stupid, of you to argue that the Peace Prize should be awarded in the SAME YEAR that the winner escalates a war.

"The nominations for this year's Nobel prizes were closed last February 1, which was a mere 12 days after Barack Obama swore the oath as president. That, in turn, also means that he was ostensibly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for those achievements accrued prior to his ever taking office."

Just because O doesn't advance D positions isn't

evidence that he doesn't know HOW to.

He's doing exactly what 99% of the population

does at work:  whatever is necessary to prevent

being fired.  THAT is what drives most people...

including Obama.  He's doing what he thinks will