‘What makes me cautiously optimistic about my successor and the shift from campaign mode to governance is there’s something about the solemn responsibilities of that office, the extraordinary demands that are placed on the United States — not just by its own people but by people around the world — that forces you to focus, that demands seriousness. And if you’re not serious about the job, then you probably won’t be there very long because it will expose problems.’

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There he goes again. President Obama just can’t help himself. Even when he’s on foreign soil, as he was this week at Berlin. While ostensibly professing to be “optimistic” about his successor, Mr. Obama had to qualify himself. He was only “cautiously” optimistic. And it’s not anything about Donald Trump himself that makes Mr. Obama optimistic, if cautiously so, but it’s something about the responsibilities of the office. We don’t gainsay the difficulties Mr. Obama himself has had with the constitutional oath, but speak for yourself, we say, and spare us the condescension.

Not to mention bellyaching about the “demands that are placed on the United States.” The president speaks of demands being placed on the United States “by its own people.” The very concept strikes us as an absurdly socialistic solipsism. It’s a form of blame-shifting (In truth the only Americans who present “demands” to the American taxpayer are the Democrats headed by Mr. Obama himself). To the degree that foreigners have presented demands, Mr. Obama has had at every turn the opportunity to say no. That he has lacked the wherewithal to do that is not a sign of seriousness.

What a contrast to, say, Reagan. As long as our typewriter works, we will remember what happened at Reykjavik, where Soviet party boss, Mikhail Gorbachev, presented Reagan with one of those demands Mr. Obama finds so burdensome. It was a demand that we Yanks give up the Strategic Defense Initiative known as “Star Wars.” In an upstairs room, American aides were settling in for a long parley between the two superpowers, when word came that Reagan had stood up and was walking out on the leader of the Soviet Union.

How the world wept and wailed. There was fear the editor of the New York Times might need to get his hands replaced because he was wringing them so obsessively. Then, soon enough, the Kremlin camarilla comprehended it couldn’t beat us, and the communist regime collapsed. The whole bizarre chapter of the Soviet Union faded into history. No complaining about the burdens of the office from Reagan, nor lectures to the rest of us of the need to take it seriously. As his presidency neared its end, he said he’d go back to California and, first off, take a nap. “Ah, come to think of it,” he added, “things won’t be all that different after all.”