The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

News You Can Use
“Free Scary Face Pancakes Will Be Given Away Friday at IHOP”–headline, El Paso Times, Oct. 26

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • “Announcement on West Virginia to Big 12 isn’t coming Wednesday”–headline, Boston Herald, Oct. 26
  • “Study: Newspaper Endorsements Swing Left”–headline, Politico.com, Oct. 26
  • “New Poll Finds a Deep Distrust of Government”–headline, New York Times, Oct. 26
  • “Palestinian Negotiator: Israel Must Agree to Our Terms, or No Peace Talks”–headline, Ha’aretz (Israel), Oct. 26

Sitter in Chief
Breaking from the great American journalistic tradition of speaking truth to power, the San Francisco Chronicle publishes this cutesy puff piece on the most powerful man in the world: “President Obama spent only a few hours in San Francisco on Tuesday, but he took just seconds to prove once again why he’s the baby whisperer.” It seems that when the president arrived at the airport, he “spotted 6-month-old Josie Knight, who was crying while being held by her mother, Gina Odom, 37, of Oakland.”

Obama heroically took “the squalling infant into his arms” and repeated, “It’s OK,” until she calmed down. “Obama bounced gently and held her for about 10 seconds before flashing a smile and returning her to Odom.”

But this isn’t just a harmless human-interest story about a baby-kissing pol. It’s a metaphor.

Here’s ABC News, reporting on the speech the president gave in Fog City: “At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.”

Oh no! Horror of horrors! Obama is the only thing standing between us and having to rely on ourselves! And do you know what they call people who rely on themselves?

Adults.

Oddly, the White House website doesn’t have the text of this speech, but here’s a passage from ABC: “The one thing that we absolutely know for sure is that if we don’t work even harder than we did in 2008, then we’re going to have a government that tells the American people, ‘you are on your own. If you get sick, you’re on your own. If you can’t afford college, you’re on your own. If you don’t like that some corporation is polluting your air or the air that your child breathes, then you’re on your own. That’s not the America I believe in. It’s not the America you believe in.”

Obama explicitly rejects the American ethos of self-reliance. He sees dependence on government not as an evil, if sometimes a necessary one, but as a goal to be pursued. It reminded us of Peggy Noonan’s observation last week that there’s something not fully adult about the president himself: “Sorry to do archetypes, but a nation in trouble probably wants a fatherly, or motherly, figure at the top. What America has right now is a bright, lost older brother. It misses Dad.”

Perhaps Obama is eager to infantilize Americans precisely because he is not a fatherly figure–a man of unquestioned wisdom and maturity. A strong father continues to command his children’s respect even as they too reach adulthood. As Mark Twain observed, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” The “bright, lost older brother,” by contrast, can command the respect only of young children.

Fox News, meanwhile, reports on an effort to push nanny-statism even further: “Gov. Dan Malloy has declared Thursday ‘Diaper Need Awareness Day’ as part of a campaign by The Nutmeg State to pressure Washington into providing free diapers to low-income families.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, like Malloy a Connecticut Democrat, is pushing legislation that “would allow Uncle Sam to . . . provide funding for diapers and diaper supplies.”

Maybe Obama should take it one step further and ask Congress to create a new cabinet-level Department of Infant Care to provide free diapers to all Americans. (Would that include the elderly? Depends.) It would certainly resonate with his 2008 campaign theme of “change.”

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”