I feel your pain? Not so much.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson picks up on a remark made by President Obama at a rally in Boston last week, claiming that it further demonstrates the president is out of touch with average Americans. Campaigning for Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Obama said that, “Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now,and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.” Gerson claims that what Obama means is that those who disagree with his policies are not thinking rationally, perhaps due to the fear that accompanies high unemployment and foreclosure, the ever incendiary Tea Party, and a general feeling across the nation that things just haven’t gotten better.

Has Gerson hit on something? Obama’s foes are increasingly angry, and his supporters are increasingly disillusioned. Battered from the right, which thinks he is reshaping America too radically, and the left, which feels the president has failed to deliver on many campaign promises, Obama sticks to his they-just-don’t-understand defense. Once promising to raise the national discourse above politics as usual, Obama now seems to have risen so far above the fray that he can’t seem to grasp why a scared electorate might have something to teach him. Do we need another I-feel-your-pain president? Probably not, but there is something to be gained from listening to people on the ground, on both sides of the debate, who still don’t see the promises they were made two years ago coming to fruition.