“Does any of this matter, or is it merely interesting?” Richard Cohen of the Washington Post asked about his own column in today’s paper. Since Cohen wrote it, you already know the answer: It didn’t matter and it wasn’t interesting.
In recently describing the Post’s op-ed page as the worst in America, Gawker (which I actually like) listed Cohen as two of the top six reasons why. Cohen’s column today offered evidence that Gawker could have given him at least one more spot on its list.
In it, Cohen writes:
If Obama ends the deepest recession since the Great Depression, if he enacts health-care reform, if he succeeds in Afghanistan, then his presidency will have been remarkable, maybe even great — the triumph of intellect. The man will be his own movement. But if he fails in all or most of that, it will be because it is not enough to be the smartest person in the room. Warmth and commitment matter, too — a driving sense of conviction, the fulsome embrace of causes and not just issues.
Trite. Obvious. Empty. For Cohen, it’s all in a day’s work.
