At one point, it seemed as though Barack Obama was set to become the great Democratic leader for the 21st century. Here is a man who was able to ride an impossibly good angle into the White House — in just four years, he went from being an obscure state senator to president of the United States. What’s more, he had in the House and Senate the most liberal majorities that anybody has seen since the 89th Congress that enacted most of the Great Society. Everything was primed for him to implement Great Society 2.0.

Except the reason that the country installed the Democrats in the first place was this economic crisis, which began under Republican leadership. But how to get one’s face onto Mount Rushmore by only coaxing the economy to add jobs? William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge were managers of economic growth after contractions, and they have been dismissed by (usually liberal) historians with a collective wave of the hand for generations. No, no … to be great you have to reform.