AIG mess clips the wings of high-flying Obama team

As part of our package on Obama's fall from grace, here's my piece on how the AIG mess has clipped the wings of our better angels.

The bonuses provide an early glimpse of an administration that is not offering the kind of change people were waiting for. The technocratic competence symbolized by the Ivy League degrees has proved a farce in practice. The honest and transparent government represented by ambitious-sounding executive orders has proved to be more smoke than substance.

Worst of all, this episode has dashed hopes that Obama would, in his words, “govern for all the people, not just the interests of the wealthy and well-connected.”

Read the whole thing here.