Here’s the hard thing Republicans have to do if they don’t want this crisis to go to waste: they have to ignore their id, the temptation of the sugar high of partisan point-scoring. They must willfully set aside Obama’s presence in the fray, leaving the short term personalized attacks on the table, and go after the much bigger prize. Obama isn’t running for office again. Liberalism is. Making this about him is a short term boost to the pleasure center of the conservative brain. Making this about the inherent falsehood of the progressive project will help conservatism win.

“No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”

This is the president’s favorite false alternative: either we do things “alone,” or government does them for us “collectively.” What this world view leaves out, of course, is the voluntary cooperation of private individuals, particularly their cooperation in the free market. Which is to say that he excludes from his world view the actual majority of human activity.

But this is the basic false alternative of every Obama speech, and it is the flimsy intellectual foundation of his entire presidency. Individualism and the free market always mean doing everything “alone,” and the only alternative, the only way of doing things “together,” is a giant government program.

We have too many outrage pimps on both sides of the aisle whipping the respective bases into a frenzy and fury against the other side. I don’t have enough time or energy to be outraged about it all. There are things to be outraged by, but not everything, and certainly not with full energy dedicated to every perceived slight and grievance.

What I am finding is that among conservatives there is too much outrage, piss, and vinegar. It makes our ideas less effective. We have become humorless, angry opponents of the President instead of happy warriors selling better ideas. We are not even selling ideas.

Conservatives, frankly, have become purveyors of outrage instead of preachers for a cause. Instead of showing how increasing government harms people, how free markets help people, and how conservative policies benefit all Americans, we scream “Benghazi” and “Fast & Furious.”

We’re off key and off message. We’ve become professional victims dialed up to 10 on the outrage meter. Who the hell wants to listen to conservatives whining and moaning all the time about the outrage du jour? Seriously? Mitt Romney ran a campaign on just how bad things are, but he was rejected by a majority of Americans who felt like he really did not care about them and really had no plans to improve their lives.

We Americans, in the president’s telling, have continually “discovered” the need for ever-larger government while conveniently retaining all of our skepticism of central authority and celebration of private initiative. And a lucky thing it is that we keep enlarging government, since the alternative is apparently the end of all large-scale enterprise: “No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation, and one people.”

We cannot “treat name-calling as reasoned debate,” Obama said, in a speech made possible by a campaign that described his opponent as seeking to ship jobs overseas, oppress rape victims and spread cancer.

Yes he can … overcome strawmen.

The magic of theater is that is has the power to overwhelm thought: For a moment, you forget that you are watching actors reciting lines that they have memorized and making scripted movements, and you are taken into the world of the play. Obama’s politics of histrionics — the little children, the Sandra Flukes, the imperial stage dressing — also is conceived with the goal of overwhelming thought. That tells you something about the president and what he stands for. The continued success of this traveling medicine show of a presidency tells you something about the American people.

On Friday, in his moving and heartfelt statement in response to the horrific shooting in Newtown, Conn., President Obama said, “As a country, we have been through this too many times… . And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

There’s just one problem: In a democracy, “politics” is a synonym for “democracy.” It is through politics that people with strong feelings and strong interests peaceably hash out their disagreements. When politicians say they want to do something regardless of the politics, or they want to go “above” or “beyond” politics, what they generally mean is they want to do something regardless of the normal rules or what their opponents have to say or, often, the facts. This, after all, is the point of the expression “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

Perhaps sphinxlike leaders make the strongest leaders — allies see in them exactly what they want to see, thus giving the leader in question considerable freedom of action. Ronald Reagan’s political success arguably derived from the fact that his conservative supporters saw him as a loyalist and his moderate supporters saw him as pragmatic and flexible when necessary. In a related vein, Barack Obama commands the allegiance of a large number of base liberals, moderates, and culturally conservative minority voters because members of each of these potentially clashing constituencies see him as one of them.