"There was a make-believe quality to President Obama's second inaugural address, as if all that's required to solve serious problems are the intelligence to produce proper policies and the political grit to get them approved. Perish the thought that there are deep conflicts among the things that Americans want, or the possibility that some problems lack easy, obvious and inexpensive remedies. This isn't the vision Obama was peddling. ... 

"Why are Americans so disillusioned with politics? One reason is that our leaders -- and this applies to both parties -- often create narratives that seem uplifting and convincing only because they are completely detached from underlying realities. These fantasies transcend routine rhetorical flourishes and self-serving exaggerations and simplifications. But sooner or later, the realities assert themselves. People grasp that they've been misled. They feel betrayed; there's a backlash. 
 
"The job of the president is not merely to inspire. It is first and foremost to inform -- to help people see the world as it is, not as they wish it to be -- and then to craft policies based on that understanding. Barack Obama is so confident of his rhetorical powers that he violates such self-restraint. In his speech, he casually mentioned 'hard choices' but didn't say what they are; he offhandedly acknowledged that combatting climate change will be 'long' but didn't say why. His make-believe assumptions sound good but will have a short shelf life."

"President Obama can speak as if the cost of his new health care entitlement will not make it even harder to keep the debt from spiraling out of control and even promise more new costly projects. He can pretend that Medicare and Social Security must remain unchanged without bankrupting the country. He can also ignore the fact that the size not just of the federal government but also of local and state governments is fiscally unsustainable. But reality has a way of interfering with even the sweetest liberal fantasies.
 
"Like it or not, liberalism must now face the problem of how to pay the bill for its big-government agenda. That was something that never occurred to Americans in the heyday of liberal political ascendance from the 1930s to the 1960s, as the thought of such limits was not imaginable. But there is no evading the fact that unless entitlements are reformed the whole system will collapse sometime in the coming decades. Liberals never used to worry about paying for their schemes, but now they must."

"The only voice that really soared at midday was Beyonce’s, while singing the national anthem. President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address, by contrast, was flat, partisan and surprisingly pedestrian — more a laundry list of preferred political programs than a vision for a divided America and disoriented world. ... 

"Maybe Obama has a strategic vision for the second term. But all I heard today was a rallying cry to his supporters as they prepare for the political fights ahead."

"The 'legacy thing' may be harder than Barack Obama imagines. Beginning his second term, Obama has a focused, though unstated, agenda: to achieve presidential greatness in the eyes of historians and Americans. In this, he will almost certainly fail. He is already a historic president as the first African-American to be elected, but there is a chasm between being historic and being great.
 
"Presidents are ultimately judged not by their total record, or by their ability to enact their agendas, or by their popularity. They are judged by whether they get a few very big decisions right or wrong. ... 

"[Obama] is probably fooling himself if he thinks ObamaCare, by itself, ensures him a spot close to the top in the presidential rankings. Medicare and Medicaid (far larger insurance expansions) didn't do that for LBJ, so why should a lesser achievement do it for Obama? Indeed, if the implementation goes badly (coverage overestimated, costs underestimated), ObamaCare could backfire."

"In Mr. Reid's Washington, the House works its will, the Senate does crossword puzzles. Its committees do not produce bills, its senators do not debate or amend, the body does not vote. The House, to accomplish anything, is forced to engage in backroom wrangling with the White House, the results of which are presented to the nation as a fait accompli. The Senate claims total deniability. ... 

"Mr. Reid's primary motive is to shield his vulnerable members from tough votes and to hide the huge divisions in his party.  

"He does not want a debate on gun control, as it would force Democratic senators to choose between President Obama and their own pro-Second Amendment constituents. The majority leader would not offer a bill during the fiscal-cliff negotiations because many Democrats disagreed with their president's proposed tax hikes. He has not produced a budget because to do so would expose the party's real spending ambitions, which would create political problems back home for his members."

"President Barack Obama set a new standard Wednesday for stupidly exploitative White House events by appearing onstage with children to unveil his gun control proposals. ... 

"News flash: Kids don’t want bad things to happen. This would be a genuinely useful insight … if we could write public policy in crayon. The White House event smacked of the old unilateral disarmament campaigns of the 1980s when we were supposed to get rid of our nuclear weapons because they scared youngsters. 
 
"We can safely assume that the kids onstage with Obama don’t have a fine-grained sense of the limits of gun control or a proper regard for the Second Amendment. That’s OK, though — neither does he."

"It's hard for a lot of people, particularly on the right, to recognize that the conservative movement's problems are mostly problems of success. The Republican Party's problems are much more recognizable as the problems of failure, including the failure to recognize the limits of that movement's success. … 

"It's not that the GOP isn't conservative enough, it's that it isn't tactically smart or persuasive enough to move the rest of the nation in a more conservative direction. Moreover, thanks in part to the myth that all that stands between conservatives and total victory is a philosophically pure GOP, party leaders suffer from a debilitating lack of trust -- some of it well earned -- from the rank and file. 

"But politics is about persuasion, and a party consumed by the need to prove its purity to its base is going to have a very hard time proving anything else to the rest of the country."

"ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York lawmakers agreed to pass the toughest gun control law in the nation and the first since the Newtown, Conn., school shooting, and now dare other states and Washington to follow. ... 

"Under current state law, assault weapons are defined by having two 'military rifle' features spelled out in the law. The proposal would reduce that to one feature and include the popular pistol grip. 

"Private sales of assault weapons to someone other than an immediate family would be subject to a background check through a dealer. Also Internet sales of assault weapons would be banned, and failing to safely store a weapon could be subject to a misdemeanor charge.  

"Ammunition magazines would be restricted to seven bullets, from the current 10, and current owners of higher-capacity magazines would have a year to sell them out of state. An owner caught at home with eight or more bullets in a magazine could face a misdemeanor charge."

"Health-insurance premiums have been rising — and consumers will experience another series of price shocks later this year when some see their premiums skyrocket thanks to the Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare. ... 

"States won't experience equal increases in their premiums under ObamaCare. Ironically, citizens in states that have acted responsibly over the years by adhering to standard actuarial principles and limiting the (often politically motivated) mandates will see the biggest increases, because their premiums have typically been the lowest. ... 

"[...] Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming and Virginia will likely see the largest increases — somewhere between 65% and 100%. Another 18 states, including Texas and Michigan, could see their rates rise between 35% and 65%."

"President Barack Obama is trying an end run around the NRA — rallying groups as varied as churches, medical organizations, retailers and the Rotary Club to build support for new gun regulations. 

"It’s an unusual strategy but one the Obama administration has used before: projecting strength on an issue by trying to create the perception that the White House is riding a wave of momentum from the American people. It was the theme of Obama’s two presidential campaigns and was central to his campaign-style road show to tout his fiscal cliff priorities in December. 

"Participants in Vice President Joe Biden’s meetings have said the White House is seeking to mount an aggressive effort to back the gun-control push, which is likely to formally commence next week after Biden delivers his recommendations to the president."