OPINION: Has Phony Betomania Already Bitten the Dust?

Legitimately interesting yet eminently mockable GenXer Beto O'Rourke joins the 2020 presidential scrum.

In retrospect, the biggest surprise was that Beto O'Rourke did not announce his long-expected (though recently denied) presidential candidacy last week in his native habitat of South by Southwest, while he was promoting an HBO documentary about his stirring failure to unseat one of the most reviled incumbents in American politics.

But then, the former El Paso congressman, whose occasionally moody Gen X uplift has almost completely overshadowed his unusual political path and heterodox policy beliefs, probably...