Amidst the practiced pauses and detached narration of the crash came a litany of excuses, evasions, and arrogant denials. He more or less cast himself as the victim of a “bad economy,” as if two years of sending anti-business signals to employers had nothing to do with the high jobless rate. He made sure to note that other presidents had gotten similarly clocked after two years. And he essentially blamed the American people for a lack of perception and patience.

But since he couldn’t say that directly, he had to couch his self-justification in the form of patronizing blather about how he could have “accomplished” more, made better “progress,” and “communicated” more effectively with the American people. He tried to make some sort of phony distinction between his “policy decisions” and his “policy outcomes,” implying that the people objected to the latter but not to the former. Never mind that the exit polls demonstrated that they repudiated both.

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/11/04/the-observer-at-his-own-funera