Narrowcasting the Obama Presidency

In the United States we like to 'rate' a President,' Richard Neustadt observed. 'We measure him as 'weak' or 'strong' and call what we are measuring his 'leadership.' We do not wait until a man is dead; we rate him from the moment he takes office.' Half a century later, that habit has been amplified and accelerated by an unending news cycle and the outsized demand for commentary across the online world. The polarizing figure of Barack Hussein Obama has been catnip here: Observers from all spaces on the spectra of partisanship and sanity began weighing in on the Obama presidency long before he actually took office in January 2009.