The Presidential Ego

A retiring congressman from Arkansas, Marion Berry, recounts a meeting with President Obama in which Mr. Obama explains why what happened to health "reform" and the Democratic majority in 1994 won't happen in 2010: "The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, 'Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me.'" Maybe it was the president self-deprecatingly mocking his own ego, but the congressman certainly didn't take it that way. Politico has the story from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, which I found via an email from reader P., who sent along Mark Melcher's Political Forum newsletter in which it was repeated.