Summoning the messianic campaigner from 08 to save the nation from decline

The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne was a commentator I respected prior to the 2008 Democratic primary when he joined his JournoList colleagues in smearing Bill and Hillary Clinton in order to ensure Barack Obama’s nomination. Back then Dionne boasted:

 "One of the politicians who spoke before Obama at the{Wilmington} rally, Delaware state Treasurer Jack Markell, cited the New Testament letter to the Hebrews in which Saint Paul spoke of "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It was a revealing moment: While Clinton wages a campaign, Obama is preaching a revival."

In today’s op-ed, Dionne tries to summon the messianic campaigner from 08 to save the nation at a critical point in its history:

WASHINGTON -- American decline is the specter haunting our politics. This could be President Obama's undoing -- or it could provide him with the opportunity to revive his presidency.

But there’s been a noteworthy change in Dionne’s rhetoric since 08. Instead of his earlier grotesque distortions of the truth in his attempts to defame  Bill and Hillary Clinton and disparage the former president’s administration, Dionne writes:

George H. W. Bush followed, and he deserves great credit for his management of the Gulf War and the larger international transition after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bill Clinton built on Bush's unpopular but necessary budget and restored the federal government's solvency while also serving as a careful steward of American influence and our image in the world. Charles Krauthammer, my columnist colleague, likes to refer to the 1990s as a "holiday from history," but the truth is that American power reached its zenith under Clinton. If that was a holiday, we need more vacations like it.

But still hoping for an old-timey “revival,” Dionne concludes:

For Obama, political renewal requires a bold and persistent campaign for national renewal. This would challenge his political opponents. But more importantly, it would challenge all of us.

Although Dionne is now expressing appreciation for the Clinton years, he apparently hasn’t figured out yet that the nation needs a statesman to lead it forward in these complex and perilous times, not a politician who has mastered the cadences and crowd-pleasing techniques of an evangelical preacher at a camp meeting.