The Tragedy of Barack Obama

In Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine http://www.amazon.com/Mauve-Gloves-Madmen-Clutter-Vine/dp/0553380591/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1312386602&sr=1-2  Tom Wolfe tells us of  the man who always peaked too soon.

“Back in 1959 I was already into long hair and sideburns and leather and levis and boots and chains and violence and cold steel…but nobody called me hip…they called me a hood and goddamned juvenile delinquent.

Three years later my look was all over Saks.

But I was into something else…”

And so it goes as Wolfe chronicles various American fads.

In looking at Barack Obama he is undeniably talented but he’s also the man who peaked too soon.  President without any experience, a Nobel Prize bestowed before he’d had a chance to do anything to earn it.  But it is Obama’s unique achievement that he has peaked too soon with a set of political ideas which have clearly passed their sell-by date.  Unfortunately the tragedy is ours as well as his.