Peggy Noonan writes, "New White Houses are always ardent for change, for breakthroughs.
They want to be know for accomplishing a lot of things.
But great administrations can usually be remembered in a sentence.
"He freed the slaves" - Lincoln.
"He lifted us out of the Great Depression and helped to win World War II" - FDR.
An administration about everything is an administration about nothing.
Mr. Obama is not seeing "his sentence", the sentence history has given him:
"He brought America back from economic collapse and kept us strong and secure in the age of terror."
That's all anybody wants. It's all that's needed.
It is a great and worthy sentence, the kind that gives you a second term and the affectionate memory of history. If Mr. Obama earns it and makes it true of himself, he will be called good to great. But you have to meet it, you have to do it.
To get the first part of the sentence right would take a lot—restoring the confidence of the nation, getting spending down so people don't feel a sense of horror as they look at the future, getting or keeping the dollar sound, keeping the banks up and operating.
Mr. Obama cannot replace his sentence with 10 paragraphs, and he can't escape it, either. Because history dictated it. History wrote it.
"He brought America back from economic collapse and kept us strong and secure in the age of terror."
Sentences don't really get better than that. He should stop looking for a better one. There isn't a better one.
condensed from essay by Peggy Noonan, WSJ, 6/27/09
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