Not since Lincoln

P.M. Carpenter ponders the incredulity of it all with a heavy sigh:

"Not since Abe Lincoln took office has a president's political opposition been so ruthlessly determined to oppose -- even to the point of national disloyalty, which is precisely what the GOP's treacherous machinations over the debt limit represent. It is futile to look back on Obama's first two years and speculate that he should have done this, or that he should have done that, and then this or that might have proceeded better; it is futile because whatever path Obama might have chosen, his opposition was acrobatically hellbent on obstructing it."

"If Obama is to be properly faulted, then his fault lies in the rather incongruent criticism of excessive rationality. No one, least of all a chief executive of profound intellect and with a corresponding belief in the great and unifying power of Reason, could have predicted in January 2009 that the spiritually broken Grand Old Party would redouble its preceding madness, and then double that, and double even that again. ... Neither could anyone have predicted the activist left's infantile behavior and ceaseless crankiness."

Carpenter's entire piece is worth a read. In his famous 1858 "House Divided" speech, Lincoln said, "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it." For now, alas, understanding this season of discontent and "whither we are tending" seems beyond the grasp of our current crop of political leaders save Mr. "Abraham" Obama.