DOROTHY

Posted at 8:24 a.m. ET:

Dorothy Rabinowitz, of The Wall Street Journal, is a favorite of ours.  One of the great investigative journalists of our time, she finally won the Pulitzer Prize after it was denied her for years by the forces of political correctness.  She dared to ask questions in the wrong places, and you know what that brings.

Here, Dorothy takes on the new president, wondering whether the Obama style will actually hold up for long.  Her analysis is superb:

His view of America's new position in the world...was amply clear, its tone familiar. America had entered upon a new day -- we once were lost and now we're found, a people restored to the paths of principle and honor. Hillary Clinton, speaking as secretary of state, would a few days later add her voice to the general thanksgiving for our rebirth, declaring, "There is a great exhalation of breath going on in the world."

Yes, we can feel all the breathing on us.  Or is it laughing?

To hear Mr. Obama speak now on matters like the national defense is to recognize that the leader now in the White House is in every respect the person he seemed on the campaign trail: a man of immense moral certitude, prone to an abstract idealism, and pronouncements that range between the rational and the otherworldly.

I'm glad someone said that.  Dorothy quotes Obama:

"It is precisely our ideals that give us the strength and the moral high ground to be able to effectively deal with the unthinking violence that we see emanating from terrorist organizations around the world."

Dorothy wonders:

What can this mean? What moral high ground, exactly, would have enabled us to deter the designs of the religious fanatics in search of martyrdom and the slaughter of as many Americans as possible on September 11?

Hmm.  What gives this woman the right to ask intelligent questions?  Why doesn't she accept the wisdom and goodness of The One?

In this new day of our national salvation, then -- in a post 9/11 America that had seen 3,000 of its inhabitants murdered by terrorists -- it was now acceptable to characterize strenuous efforts to avert more such catastrophes as "expediency." It was not only acceptable, but proof of a higher moral intelligence.

The Obama campaign was always based on the idea that Obama and his legions have a higher moral intelligence, and a higher intelligence in every other area as well.  Why, just look at those sheepskins.

Mr. Obama, who has always been much better than his vocal supporters on the far left, better than the cadres in MoveOn.Org, is no extremist. Still, there is no reason to think that his views on security issues and Guantanamo and interrogations, his tendency to minimize the central importance of armed might, are not deeply rooted. They are clearly core beliefs.

And that, along with those trumpeting declarations to the world that new leadership had now come to the United States, that we were now a nation worthy of the world's trust -- those speeches suggesting that after years of darkness America had now been rescued, just barely, from the abyss -- will be in the end this president's Achilles' heel. Those are not, Mr. Obama may discover, tones that wear well in the course of a presidency.

COMMENT:  No, they don't wear well.  That will become apparent when Mr. Obama learns, to his anticipated horror, that hostile nations will not change their designs just because he is in the White House.  Only he can choose whether to become another Jimmy Carter, that very little man with the very big ego.  We hope he wakes up in time to choose wisely.

February 2, 2009.