When Barack Obama announced that he was running for president, he was clear that, if elected, he planned "not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation." Twenty months after that statement in Springfield, Ill., we have a much clearer view of what he means by "change we can believe in." In a campaign of soaring generalizations on mostly centrist themes, Obama has described the details of the transformation with almost surgical precision. What he offers may be, in substance and in spirit, a radical departure from the principles of the America Dream that...