Obama did inherit a deficit when he came into office. Why this fact justifies racking up vastly more debt and bigger deficits is a logical mystery.

Facts are mere speed bumps on the road to lefty moral outrage.

(J)ust to clarify: If you go into every situation saying there's absolutely nothing worth fighting over, you will inevitably end up on a cot sleeping next to a guy named Tiny, bringing him breakfast in his cell every morning, and spending your afternoons ironing his boxers. Or, in the case of the French, you might spend your afternoon rounding up Jews to send to Germany, but you get the point.

Pragmatism is the disguise progressive and other ideologues do when they want to demonize competing ideologies.

A rising economic tide is bad for people who live off of the poverty of others.

But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics.

Americans are very smart about the things they care about, and ignorant about the things they don't.