The Obama agenda is an admirable one. Yet to imagine that installing a particular individual in the Oval Office will produce decisive action on any of these fronts is to succumb to the grandest delusion of all. The quadrennial ritual of electing a president is not an exercise in promoting change, regardless of what candidates may claim and ordinary voters believe. No doubt the race for the presidency matters. It doesn’t matter nearly as much as the media’s obsessive coverage suggests.

The newly inaugurated president will take office, buoyed by expectations that history will soon be restored to proper trajectory and the nation put back on track. There is something touching about these expectations, but also something pathetic, like the battered wife who expects that this time her husband will actually keep his oft-violated vow never to raise his hand against her.