Safe to say most Washingtonians had never heard of a "derecho" before June 29, when one of these speedy and destructive windstorms ploughed through the capital, leaving behind dead bodies and battered homes and more than a million households without power. Now the storm is over, and one can expect this obscure meteorological term to pass just as swiftly into everyday speech. Exotic, vaguely menacing, and evoking senseless, abrupt calamity, "derecho" is an especially apt description of America in the age of Obama.Like the homeowners in Fairfax County, Va., picking up felled tree branches and putting in insurance claims,...