John Dickerson

Discussing the presidency of Barack Obama at this stage is, frankly, not a very rewarding enterprise. The engaged, politics-wonk audience, perhaps especially in Canada, seems basically divided between an oh-thank-God-he’s-not-Bush-and-how-dare-you-question-him majority and a smaller, even more vocal rump who believe he’s destroying the great Bush legacy. (Call the latter group the Cheney Junior Achievers.) It may still be early to suggest the truth lies somewhere in between: that the U.S. president is acting in good faith with considerable skill, but that after all he’s human and sometimes fallible.