he lacked the manic “singularity” of high modernism, and his proposed solution, the stimulus, was a grab-bag of activities needing over 1,000 pages to describe, costing nearly $800 billion, but somehow, after all that, generating very little drama. The president never followed up on the premise of a new start for the nation, never engaged in epic combat against the dead hand of history. His mode of governing was wordy, tactical, splintered among many objectives. He wanted every deserving cause to get a donation.
