That’s the title of a Peggy Noonan piece, and Joy McCann (Little Miss Attila) has some comments about the stars – or scales – falling from Peggy’s eyes:

…she, Ann Althouse, and Megan McArdle will have to deal with it for the rest of their lives. Those three women have all been an intellectual blessing to public discourse in this country, but they all succombed to the same cult of personality two years ago, and we still do not know what the final price tag on that cult of personality is going to be.

Well, Megan’s off of my Elections Have Consequences list… but, yeah, Joy’s right: the people who bought into the President’s cult of personality are going to have to deal with that eventually.

Personal reminiscence after the fold.

Since Joy told her Election Night story, I’ll tell mine… actually, mine’s dull: I went to a RNC party, didn’t have a drink – cash bar. Cash effing bar – and bailed once it was clear that the election was over. My most publicly emotionally fraught moment was when some twerp of a DJ played a song called ‘Landslide’ on the car radio and I invited the fellow to engage in self-copulation… but I’ll say it now: I was off-balance and not centered. We all were. One more good shot would have knocked a lot of us out for the foreseeable future.

And then the President-elect wimped out.

The Democrats needed to win that runoff election in Georgia. They needed to win the LA-04 open seat. They even needed to win in LA-02. And they didn’t because President-elect Obama lacked the self-confidence needed to take an actual political risk. He decided that he would rather have the Democrats lose the seats without his help than risk having the Democrats lose them even with his help… and Obama no doubt told himself that he was being prudent, not skittish. And so I and the rest of the VRWC got three victories when we rather badly needed them. That was enough to keep us going until the Tea Parties, the House Holding The Line, and of course flipping Virginia, the NJ governorship, and MA-SEN.

So while I’m pleased that Peggy Noonan has had this thought:

When your most creative thoughts in the middle of a disaster revolve around protecting your position, you are summoning trouble. When you try to dodge ownership of a problem, when you try to hide from responsibility, life will give you ownership and responsibility the hard way.

…I didn’t need to be told it. I knew it in December 2008. And I’ve been acting and arguing accordingly ever since.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.