By Thomas Frank

This is my last weekly column for the Wall Street Journal, and writing it has naturally put me in mind of my first efforts in this space, back in the summer of 2008.

Those were the days when economic disaster was beginning to unfold; it hit a crescendo in September of that year when Wall Street teetered and the government came to the rescue with a TARP.

By November, the nation's mood had soured enough that a senator from Illinois won the presidency even though he appeared to defy political convention in countless ways. And all the while, the front...