How Did Someone So Smart Go So Wrong?

Noonan ponders presidential implosion:

From the day he was sworn in he seemed to have had no practical or intuitive sense of what was on the American mind.

There's a puzzle here, starting with that first phrase, "from the day he was sworn in".

Up until that day, he was able to sell himself. After that day, the slide began. I don't think it was just that the media turned on him. I would say that the media only began to turn on him very recently.

So here's the puzzle - how was it that he seemed to lose his sense of what Americans wanted?

I think part of the problem was that once he was in office, he had to start making concrete decisions. Up until then he had gotten by with much glorious vagueness which let people project their hopes onto him.

I think he does understand what sorts of glorious vagueness Americans like. But he's weak on what Americans like in the way of actual details. So he fell back on his underlying political philosophy - including the idea that a smart elite should control the great unwashed - to make them better!

But here's a truth that never gets old:
Americans don't like to be controlled.