Election 2012: "As the future dimishes, the past looms larger."

My friend, the cynic, long lost, has now returned for a short visit. He rails:

"Obama is an affirmative action President, a child and culmination of the 1960s. Inexperienced and mildly incompetent, he quite naturally sees the history of the United States, and its problem and possibilities, from the bottom up, from the black and slave experience, which he strongly and logically identifies with.

"He is a black Kansan trying to find his way in a white world. He is an outsider trying to be inside, to create a better inside for the marginalized citizen with little understanding (or empathy) for the Euro benefits in the overall American scheme.

"He is a man of his time: a blamer.

"He studied and taught constitutional law, but sees the Constitution as a deformed impediment to equality and justice; one that must be changed. (See Supreme Court.)

"America is too great a concept, a country, to be brought down by inexperience. The way to progress will be forward, but it unfortunately is not always a straight line."