Glenn Reynolds' opinion of most things isn't trustworthy, with the latest example provided by his Wall Street Journal guest editorial "What I Saw at the Tea Party Convention" (link):

1. He says that Obama's actions have "brought millions of Americans to [take to] the streets over the past year". That number is at the least open to debate; Eric Boehlert questions that number and challenges Reynolds to provide an estimate here.

2. He says:

There were promises of transparency and of a new kind of collaborative politics where establishment figures listened to ordinary Americans. We were going to see net spending cuts, tax cuts for nearly all Americans, an end to earmarks, legislation posted online for the public to review before it is signed into law, and a line-by-line review of the federal budget to remove wasteful programs... These weren't the tea-party platforms I heard discussed in Nashville last weekend. They were the campaign promises of Barack Obama in 2008.

It should be obvious to all that there's a huge gulf between the policies of Obama and those of the tea partiers. The first is a liberal Democrat, the latter stresses fiscal conservatism with some being extreme fiscal conservatives. Obviously, any cuts that Obama would make would be far less than any cuts that libertarians would want made; no one ever thought Obama would eliminate the Department of Education or the like. So, why is Reynolds pretending there's an overlap between their positions?

3. He says:

[Obama's ideas were so] popular, it turns out, that average Americans are organizing themselves in pursuit of the kind of good government Mr. Obama promised, but has not delivered. And that, in a nutshell, was the feel of the National Tea Party Convention.

That is, like the quote above, highly misleading. They aren't organizing themselves in pursuit of an objectively-defined version of "good government", but of a fiscal conservative version of government. They think that would be "good government", even if the vast majority of Americans - once acquainted with what their ideology would lead to - would not consider it good government at all.

4. He says:

A year ago, many told me, they were depressed about the future of America. Watching television pundits talk about President Obama's transformative plans for big government, they felt alone, isolated and helpless. That changed when protests, organized by bloggers, met Mr. Obama a year ago in Denver, Colo., Mesa, Ariz., and Seattle, Wash. Then came CNBC talker Rick Santelli's famous on-air rant on Feb. 19, 2009, which gave the tea-party movement its name.

Once again, no one in their right mind thought Obama was anything but a big government liberal. As for the protests, they almost assuredly consisted simply of people waving loopy signs; they were almost assuredly completely anti-intellectual and ineffective protests that didn't attempt to intellectually engage Obama or one of his leading supporters. I tried to encourage people to intellectually engage Obama in March of last year; where was Reynolds?

5. He says "The political elites have failed, and citizens are stepping in to pick up the slack." For an example of what that means in practice, see this. The tea partiers picking up the slack involves them promoting plans that would make their situation even worse.