R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on the 60s

"As I wrote last week, Newt is a 1960s generation kid. Allow me to elaborate. That generation -- my generation -- was the most ballyhooed generation raised in the 20th century, and it was -- at least in politics -- a failed generation. Gingrich, the Clintons, Al Gore, and the rest of the 1960s hustlers began their political careers in college when they were the first generation to actually believe that student government was on campus to govern. The weak Liberal administrators went along with them and gave them a say in the running of their universities. The universities have yet to recover. Yet, beyond the damage they did to the universities was the damage they did to themselves. They became the most self-absorbed generation of narcissists ever heard of. From their student government days to their days in national politics they all lived out a fantasy. Now it is over. It would be eminently fitting if Romney won the presidency and set the country on course in 2012. He is from the normal half of that generation, a man who was a student in the 1960s and afterwards a businessman, until he had secured his fortune and entered public life in middle age. By then the Clintons and Newt had been supping at the public trough for years."

Yep.

Except for Obama. He's not one of them, but he definitely exceeds their narcissism. Even as prepared as we were having seen, heard and experienced it for years from co-workers, friends and politicians, we've never quite seen anything like him.