"It's almost as if they take pride in being ignorant," Barack Obama mused the other day, blasting Republicans for ridiculing his exhortation to the nation to make sure its tires are properly inflated. Ah, behold the open-mindedness and cross-partisan understanding. Remember two years ago when Obama was only a media darling and not yet The Anointed One? Back then, his appeal was the extraordinary sensitivity he had for the views of others. He wrote a best-selling campaign book called "The Audacity of Hope" that was carefully unaudacious in its on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand weighing of the issues, giving the impression that nothing...