[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]As his daily gaffes accumulate, severe criticism of President Obama has spread with the verve of a brushfire, expanding from purely conservatives to his most ardent liberal backers in the media and in politics.
Liberals are aghast at the way the formerly sure-footed candidate lurches through each new day, stacking irrational decisions atop each other. With a ubiquitous narcissistic twist that is staggering, Mr. Obama always places himself — rather than policies or issues —at the center of pronouncements.
Flying off to Copenhagen on Friday to pitch an Illinois city as Olympic Games host in ’16 is the arrogant President’s latest I Can Do Anything I Want stunt. We are told he will spend just 4 or 5 hours there, pitching Chicago, a shocking expenditure of precious Presidential energy.
His smartest advisors counseled against such a risky, vacuous trip, and not only because it is of almost unsurpassable insignificance. It is politically foolish because he cannot possibly control the outcome.
Under and Over
Airily, Mr. Obama rejected his counselors, as is his custom, given his vast experience on the world stage. This trip was announced just ahead of this afternoon’s defeat of the public option on healthcare reform by a Senate committee. Does he have any notion of priorities? He flits, like a bee, from flower to flower, topic to topic, without a clue as to his mission or destination.
As with all royally underprepared and overwhelmed leaders, Mr. Obama is showing a proclivity for being unable to distinguish between silly and serious ventures.
Here is this morning’s reaction to the daffy Denmark adventure from Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. An influential liberal essayist on the Post for almost 30 years, Mr. Cohen wonders when he will stop frantically running away from the Oval Office:
“Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.”
Perhaps never in modern times has a President been so heavily oversold as Mr. Obama. Not much was expected of the 3 least effective Presidents of the last 50 years — Ford, Bush I and Carter — and none of them disappointed. Foolishly, so much was expected of Mr. Obama, who never has flashed gravitas, his admirers mistaking narcissism for his slender thinking apparatus.
His Previous Employment Wobbles
Outside of herding pliable poor people around a rundown dining room, what has Mr. Obama done in his career? A goose egg succinctly symbolizes the answer.
He has been embarrassingly oversold as a communicator — if you live in the woods, even you have seen more successful Fuller Brush salesmen with superior selling skills and believability.
He was rated sui generis as a speaker, showing that his assessors must have been blindfolded.
The only rhetorical skills we have seen are the same tired, passionless, marginally sincere campaign speech repeated ad nauseum for 2 1/2 years. No imagination, variation or originality. The better you know him, and he is on television multiple times daily, the less you like him, the less you believe him. Sort of like your mother-in-law insisting, unconvincingly, that your wife will not look like her in 30 years.
In this morning’s Wall Street Journal, the astute essayist Bret Stephens recaptured a classic I Love Me So Darned Much line from last week’s horribly crafted appeasement address before the United Nations:
“I am well aware of the expectations that accompanied my Presidency around the world.”
Is the immature Mr. Obama psycho?
Thirty days ago, Gen. McChrystal told the President he needed 40,000 more troops for Afghanistan, probably the most urgent request the President has faced in the last 8 months.
For 30 days, Mr. Obama has snubbed the general. In the last 70 days, the general said this morning, he only has spoken one time with the President, who has chosen to focus on nonsense rather than the Presidency.
