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The scope of President Obama’s public-policy offensive commands respect. When he spoke admiringly four years ago of Ronald Reagan as “a transformative president,” he must have been sincere, though he clearly disagreed with much of the transformation. And Mr. Obama certainly deserves the same courtesy from those of us who are appalled at what he is trying to do to the country.

I commented here several weeks ago on the State of the Union address, which was largely on the cusp between mendacity and delusion, as it flippantly passed over the deficit and claimed that those who doubted that American prestige was rising in the world didn’t “know what they are talking about.”