Steven: Ronald Reagan was quite the opposite, shown especially in Richard Reeves’ otherwise unfriendly biography. Recitation, especially facts associated with policy, turned Dutch into the fumbling old-timer whom critics characterize(d) him as. But whenever somebody got him mad, or impelled him to speak out and off-script, the president was plain and powerfully convincing. Those quotations are almost too crystalline to believe.

They’re the kind of phrases our current president must memorize. Barack Obama is very intelligent, but he’s flighty and a disinterested interlocutor, whatever his skill in oration. Worse, he’ll have little reason to improve so long as the media pretends his mouth makes literature. The line I most remember from last year’s debates was his solecism, “green behind the ears.”