CAN’T TELL TRUTH FROM FICTION: Megan McArdle reminds disappointed Democrats that The West Wing is only a TV show.

◼ Memo: The Aaron Sorkin Model of Political Discourse Doesn't Actually Work - Megan McArdle /The Daily Beast ◼ via Instapundit

...Jed Bartlett doesn't win policy debates because of his amazing tactical skills, his overpowering arguments, or the sheer persuasiveness of his granite-faced brand of urbane folksomeness. He wins them because Aaron Sorkin is a liberal and he wants Republicans to lose on the major issues. Unfortunately for liberals, Tom Coburn and John Boehner don't have their lines faxed over from Hollywood every morning....

◼ This weekend, Maureen Dowd proved that the armchair activists are not the only ones who have begun confusing entertaining fictions with real life....

◼ Gentry Liberals and Brass Knuckles: The Case of Maureen Dowd - The American Interest

If Maureen Dowd’s evisceration manqué of President Obama’s gun control strategy in the New York Times is any indication, Ms. Dowd is in the wrong line of work. She doesn’t understand American politics. She doesn’t know how votes are gained and lost, she doesn’t know what presidents do or understand what powers they have, and above all she doesn’t understand how politicians think.

Column writing is dangerous work and long success in the game can lead to the stifling of that Editor Within who keeps you from looking too stupid in print. A rich self esteem, fortifed by decades of op-ed tenure and dinner party table talk dominance, has apparently given Ms. Dowd the confidence to believe that she is a maestro of political infighting, a Clausewitz of strategic insight and a Machiavelli of political cunning rolled up into one stylish and elegant piece of work. From the heights of insight on which she dwells, it is easy to see what that poor schmuck Barry Obama can’t: those 60 votes on gun control were his for the taking, if he was only as shrewd a politician as Maureen Dowd....

Her efforts to describe a strategy satirize themselves; her attempts to translate a “never-let-go” attitude into practical steps amuse. But none of that causes her to doubt the shining truth: gun control would be ours if the President weren’t so pathetic. If Maureen Dowd’s political fantasies cannot be realized, it is obviously because President Obama just isn’t very good at his job.

The President should watch his back; there are a lot of Dowdians out there in Liberal La La Land, and as an inevitably disappointing second term unfolds they are increasingly ready to blame everything they don’t like about the state of the country on what they are sure is his incompetence, his political cowardice and his sloth.

◼ American Way: So, Mr President, how big is yours? A meaningful legacy is still out there for President Barack Obama - but, as recent events in Boston and over gun control have shown, it's hard to tell if he will have the 'cojones' to secure the place he wants in the minds of future generations - Peter Foster, Washington/Telegraph