Barack Obama: "Not technically insane"

David Warren: ya gotta love him.

...yet in the course of getting himself elected he said many things that were over the edge, including meaningless abstractions about hope and change, and actual suggestions that he could do things like stop the seas from rising. He is not "alone" -- nearly 70 million people voted for him, and a few million of those are still "hoping for change."

[...]

Consider, however: Barack Obama, though a little larger than life, is the caricature of a typical, career politician. The sanest of them can be disconcerting to converse with, at close quarters. The need to maintain various pretences, from sanctity to infallibility, contributes powerfully to habits of mental aloofness -- to the point where no question can be answered candidly.

Most journalists make reasonable allowances for the fact a man is a politician, but there are some like me who don't. While the condition may be mysterious, and the cause not singular, to me mad is mad. It has several times struck me, in meeting directly with "power," that if I heard a man speaking like this, while riding on a trolley, I would assume he was an outpatient.