Excerpt from Peggy Noonan's November 7th column.

All White House staffs tend to hypnotize themselves into thinking their greatest asset is the president. George W. Bush's people thought this way too—the guy is magic, associate yourself with him and you'll win big. That's what they told candidates in 2006, when Mr. Bush dragged them down. Most modern White House staffs, no matter who the president, wind up at a point where they're like the men around Stalin. Stalin would give a speech, and his commissars would all wildly applaud. The applause would go on a long time, but it had to end at some point, so Vladimir sitting up front would, in an attempt to be helpful, stop applauding and sit down. Everyone else would follow. The next week Stalin would give a speech and everything would be the same except Vladimir was no longer in the front row. He was in the Gulag. This is how White House staffs come to think: Never be the first one to stop applauding.