A no-confidence vote for Obama

Elections are about many things: local candidates, the economy, the national picture and, of course, that indefinable something we call the zeitgeist -- a Teutonic shrug of the shoulders meaning who the hell knows. But this election, while about all those things and more, was also about the commanding loss of public approval, even respect, accorded Barack Obama, and his odd, if inadvertent, cooperation in his own vilification. He is a man who blurs his own image and has allowed others to define who he is and, more often than not, who he is not.