At the 2004 Democratic convention, he visited with Newsweek reporters and editors, including me. I came away deeply impressed by his intelligence, his forceful language and his apparent willingness to take positions that seemed to rise above narrow partisanship. Obama has become the Democratic presidential front-runner, precisely because countless millions have formed a similar opinion. It is, I now think, mistaken. ~Robert Samuelson

Samuelson describes Obama’s agenda as “completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.”  He may be one of the first regular columnists to peer beyond the pleasant “mirage” of Obama’s hype to see the empty deserts that are really there.