The Vision Thing

President Obama’s Domestic Narrative Contrasts with his Less Coherent Worldview

As President Barack Obama launches his re-election bid, there’s an odd mismatch between Obama on domestic policy and Obama on foreign policy. The president’s domestic agenda is both more modest and more sweeping than his foreign policy agenda, which seems at once grandiose and strangely lacking in strategic coherence.

On domestic policy (which was the focus of 85 percent of his State of the Union speech and much of his subsequent swing through key battleground states), Obama’s overarching goal is made crystal clear: “The basic American promise [is] that if you …