Fouad Ajami explains why Barack Obama was destined to fail as president in a new op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal.

From Ajami's column:

It is in the nature of charisma that it rises out of thin air, out of need and distress, and then dissipates when the magic fails. The country has had its fill with a scapegoating that knows no end from a president who had vowed to break with recriminations and partisanship. The magic of 2008 can't be recreated, and good riddance to it. Slowly, the nation has recovered its poise. There is a widespread sense of unstated embarrassment that a political majority, if only for a moment, fell for the promise of an untested redeemer — a belief alien to the temperament of this so practical and sober a nation.

Read the full column at the newspaper's website.