Barack Obama

Obama came of age during the Reagan years and has some of the assumptions of that period baked into his worldview. In particular, he seems to believe that the "welfare state" as we know it is unsustainable and needs to be trimmed and tightened if it is not to fail altogether -- and that this is in the long-range best interests of everyone.

He's not a Republican who is trying to destroy government. He's not a sociopath who has no feeling for the suffering his policies might cause. He's simply a sincere, well-meaning man who has unnecessarily narrow definitions of what is possible, and that can lead him badly astray.