Obama: America's Putin

Here's some math you probably haven't seen before: Bill Clinton + Ronald Reagan + Vladimir Putin = Barack Obama? That's what Charles Krauthammer says in his first post-election column, paying the president-elect a compliment after sneering at conservatives who hitched their wagon to his ticket during the campaign. "With him we get a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin. (I say this admiringly.) With these qualities, Obama will now bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan." Krauthammer goes on to write that Obama ran a "brilliant general election campaign," with a "tactically perfect minimalism," and when the financial crisis hit, "he understood that all he had to do was get out of the way."