WAITING FOR SM?

 I haven't seen the much-discussed Waiting for Superman documentary about education yet, but I don't have to wait any longer for Mighty Mouse. He lives under our sink. He can eat cheese and peanut butter out of a trap without springing it, but when he does spring it, he apparently is using it to trim his nails and whiskers. He takes the poison we put out and moves it around to different places, I guess just to make us crazy.

Apparently, waiting for Superman has become our preferred method for solving public policy problems. We can no longer agree to work things through any longer, because magic pots of gold beckon us at either end of the left-right rainbow, with nothing in between but rainstorms and gloom. Obama was apparently scheduled to be Superman, according to the disillusioned liberals who appear to think they are living in a country called Sweden without all those cranky conservative states, senators, and filibusters. He didn't burn holes in them with his X-ray vision and bend their hands into the YES position on his legislation! (We won't even talk about the other side, which is Waiting for Sarahwoman.)

So Obama is out of wonk mode now and back in fighting form, oversimplifying everything on the campaign trail! Count me as the last of those who actually like the wonk mode. I do wish we could have seen an intermediate version: the president who presents a complex understanding of difficult questions with some wit and passion on an ongoing basis, trying to build a more intelligent electorate one week at a time throughout his term. Oh well, you can't have everything. But we are set to punish him for staying Clark Kent. And we are about to elect a swarm of Mighty Mice, without the Mighty part. --Tom Toles