Observing Obama in Real Time

Commenting on political events in real time used to be the preserve of the well-placed political journalist and of no one else. But no longer: with the emergence of the blogosphere commentary on contemporary events has become a privilege available to each one of us. Doing it and doing it well however remains a time-consuming and ultimately a highly-skilled job. If commentary is to be worth reading it needs to be more than opinion. It needs to be opinion informed by research and scholarship. What follows here is hopefully opinion of that kind.