Recommended: Barack Obama must abandon the Kennedy way, or he will fail

As Senator Ted Kennedy is buried today, there is the predictable adulation from the liberal press and from fellow politicians, though one is reminded that even the Mafia bosses showed deep public respect when one of their own died -- even if they were the cause of that death. But certainly Kennedy did help enact some significant socially-liberal legislation in his time, for which his memory deserves respect.

But as one foreign observer notes in The Weekly Standard (UK) Barack Obama must abandon the Kennedy way, or he will fail, Kennedy's form of big-government, big-spending liberalism is out of date in today's America, and President Obama's attempt to revive it is going to face hard sledding. Despite the Democratic Congressional majorities in the last election, America is predominantly center-right. The religious far right makes a lot of noise, and the far left is certainly popular among the chattering classes, but neither of these groups is anywhere near a majority -- the real political power in the nation is held by people who are moderately conservative or centrist. President Obama loses their support at his peril. One hopes he realizes this pretty soon.