The world usually turns out to work differently from what American presidents expected when they were campaigning.

Obama has a long-standing habit of seeing failure to support his agenda as a failure of character. Meanwhile, it’s Obama and his allies in Congress who’ve been at the forefront of the effort to make America less competitive.

Peter Schweizer has gotten lots of press on the charges in his just published book, Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and the Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Crony Capitalism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, that members of Congress made major moves in the stock market in response to information they received from top Treasury and Federal Reserve officials.