Maureen Dowd is a woman scorned and terribly disappointed. Like most of the left, she rails at America for being too rotten to appreciate Obama, who has the misfortune to be “a rational man running a most irrational nation, a high-minded man in a low-minded age.” It’s not that we are merely racists; we are, Dr. Dowd declares, “having some weird mass nervous breakdown.” Perhaps we should all be institutionalized. (“The dispute over the Islamic center has tripped some deep national lunacy. The unbottled anger and suspicion concerning ground zero show that many Americans haven’t flushed the trauma of 9/11 out of their systems — making them easy prey for fearmongers.”) Yeah, she really is that bummed out.

But after going on in this vein for some time, she confesses (my comments in brackets):

The president who is always talking about wanting to be perfectly clear is ever more opaque. [As opposed to “hope and change,” which was the model of intellectual precision?] The One, who owes his presidency to the intense feeling he stirred up, turns out to be a practical guy who can’t deal with intense feeling. [So who is the one who needs therapy?]

… Too lofty to pay heed to the daily bump and grind of politics, Obama has failed to present himself as someone with the common touch. [Unlike the candidate with the 37 bowling score and the contempt for Bible- and gun-huggers?] And to the extent that people don’t know him or don’t get him, he becomes easier to demonize. [Maybe the public knows him and doesn’t like what it sees?]

Obama is the victim [the poor dear] of the elevated expectations he so skillfully created in 2008. [Which she and her ilk ably assisted in creating.]

He came as a redeemer and then — tied up in W.’s Gordian knots [You didn’t think she could get through an entire column without blaming Bush, did you?], dragged down by an economy leeched by wars [the 9.5% unemployment rate is the fault of the surge?] and Wall Street charlatans  — didn’t redeem. And nothing bums out a nation [or a liberal columnist] that blows with the wind like a self-appointed messiah who disappoints.

If we’re not the ones we’ve been waiting for, who are we? [What’s with the “we,” Maureen? I thought we were simply nuts.]

Who are we? If you don’t buy the idea that we are a nation of psychotics and racists (or both), you might conclude we are a nation of decent souls who’ve just about had it with the insults hurled by the elites and the bait-and-switch president who ran as a competent moderate and turned out to be neither.