There’s a definite Catch-22 aspect to the presidency. Anybody crazy enough to want the job probably shouldn’t be allowed to have it. That said, anybody who thought Barack Obama was going to deal with terrorists by sending flowers and proposing group therapy is certainly naive enough to work for the Nobel Peace Prize committee.

Sweet reason never works with religious fanatics. When Obama criticized the Bush administration’s “false choice between our safety and our ideals” in 2009, he was mainly talking about torture and Guantanamo. The notorious concentration camp remains open because he ducked a confrontation with congressional Republicans determined to portray him as soft on terror.