Gene Healy: Obama's 'second-term blues' have begun

Last Wednesday marked the anniversary of President Clinton’s historic pronouncement, in the 1996 State of the Union, that “the era of big government is over.” “Not by a long shot,” President Obama seemed to say in his second inaugural last week.

It was “a surprisingly liberal speech” remarked MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: Obama warned us we were in for a “long and sometimes difficult” march toward “sustainable energy sources” and — because this president “reject[s] the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future” — perhaps a presidential war on math.