My pessimism makes me think that this is the government we deserve: led by a base, media-obsessed president warned about in so many depressing movies and novels. That Obama, quoting writers and philosophers, was an outlier that has been finally corrected. And if it is not a government we deserve then it is simply one that is representative. Or--worse--one that our system inevitably leads to.
My optimism makes me think that the leaks and special prosecutors are the white blood cells that are manifest when needed in order to deal with an invasive aberration. A large, imprecise weapon yet still helping more than it harms. With every investigation of Nixon subverting trusted power, there is a Whitewater conspiracy that turns up only infidelity after distracting the populace and devitalizing the government. Still the body survives the disease, weakened but alive.
What does it mean that Obama-haters felt the same way, in reverse?