Winning in your own mind -- too easy

Steve Hayward makes an interesting point.  First, the bottom line (let's start with the delicious dessert since it's actually the main meal here):

the bubble Obama inhabits is much larger than just the media cocoon and the cloistered nature of sycophancy inside the White House.  Once you assume that you are on “the side of History” that runs in only one direction, you become, first, intellectually lazy, and second, presumptuous, and unable to argue your position from the ground up.  It’s easy to win debates in your own mind if you simply assume that you are right about everything.  And with the media telling you that you’re so wonderful, why would you ever have second thoughts.

There is so much to chew on here.  The cocoon is worthy of its own book.  But he's right that Obama embodies, as perfectly as any liberal politician ever has, the assumption of his own correctness.  He's so sure he is right that he's never bothered to entertain the questions seriously.  [Clearly this is also a function of his own hubris.  Has there ever been a larger divide between a man's actual intellect and his lofty self-regard?]

Although Hayward doesn't address this, Krauthammer's axiom about how Democrats see the GOP as evil plays a big part in this.  It reinforces the easy dismissal of competing ideas.  Liberals such as Obama aren't just right and the opposition wrong.  Their opponents are evil.