President Obama addressed his party’s most recent shellacking in a White House press conference Wednesday.  Even to the novice, it was clear Obama exhibited symptoms of Post-Election Stress Trauma.

It was painful to watch the petulant leader of such a great country contort the message of the midterm election results.  But we must empathize; after all, Obama is in the throes of the dreaded PEST.

PEST emerged in the U.S. in 2004:  a particularly virulent outbreak afflicted liberals in Florida after President Bush won reelection. In severe cases it elicited irrational impulses to emigrate to Canada or even France.  The symptoms included feelings of sadness, frustration, isolation, bitterness, irrelevance, moodiness and fear.  That pretty well describes what we’ve seen from Obama recently.

And it’s clouding his interpretation of what just happened.  “I don’t want to try to read the tea leaves on election results,” he said.  Tea leaves?  To anyone PEST-free it’s apparent this was a referendum on Obama’s policies, a complete and utter repudiation of big government incompetence.   

Most Democratic candidates avoided Obama like the plague, but those he or his wife did campaign for lost with the exception of Pennsylvania Governor shoo-in Tom Wolf.  No guessing, no uncertainty, no tea leaf-reading required -- the exit polls are clear for anyone to see.  Democratic candidates not only obfuscated their support for the ineffective stimulus bill, Obamacare, climate rules like Cap-And-Trade and a disastrous foreign policy, but laughably tried to conceal whether they even voted for Obama.

But this wave election was more than an overwhelming repudiation of Obama liberalism.  In a landslide affirmation of conservative principles including lower taxes, less government spending and regulation, Republicans gained State Governorships and increased legislative representation in deeply blue states.  No need to read tea leaves, Mr. President, the writing is written on the wall.

Unfortunately, Obama is so riddled with PEST that obvious revelations become shrouded by his unrelenting hubris.  Displeased that only one-third of voters participated in the midterms, he presumes “to hear” the other two-thirds as if inferring their support by osmosis.  This is a hallucinatory effect of PEST, but is completely contrary to all the polls that show his approval at historic lows. 

Yet Obama remains defiant, and one wonders whether his reckless abandon in pursuing immigration executive orders are an effort to ultimately expand the ranks of potential voters reliant on government largesse.

To combat the sadness that engulfs PEST sufferers, they project failure on exogenous events rather than take personal responsibility.  Obama is wallowing in this symptom, turning upside down a long tradition in our government by placing the onus solely on Congress to propose ideas that he may dispose. 

In essence, Obama has committed to listen more, at least to the ideas he already agrees with. Incongruously, his promised Executive Orders are akin to waving a red flag in front of the bull, but in a state of cognitive dissonance he essentially says: “Bring me ideas for compromise and if I like them I’ll cooperate.”  Gee, that’s very magnanimous of him.

Obama was right about one thing, though he got the reason wrong: “voters want to see this town work.”  Darn tooting -- that’s why there’s an anti-Obama tsunami cascading upon the nation’s Capitol, sweeping more Republicans into each chamber and flushing Harry Reid out like so much obstructing flotsam.  Legislation can now freely flow. Let’s hope it’s absorbed by a compromising president, not an insufferable PEST.