Jay
the fool on the hill
Both are op-ed pieces.
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THE AUDACITY OF VANITY.
Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.
Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?
Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)
Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.
Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.
After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: " I am the one we've been waiting for." Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his lectern, until general ridicule -- it was pointed out that he was not yet president -- induced him to take it down.
He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, "you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish" -- a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how "embarrassing" it is that Europeans are multilingual but "we go over to Europe, and all we can say is 'merci beaucoup.' " Obama speaks no French.
His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism . . . that you come out of your isolation. . . . Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?
We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when "our planet began to heal." As I recall -- I'm no expert on this -- Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.
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THE AUDACITY OF EGO.
JUST LIKE the Obama girl, Obama has a crush on Obama.
Barack Obama always was a larger-than-life candidate with a healthy ego. Now he's turning into the A-Rod of politics. It's all about him.
He's giving his opponent something other than issues to attack him on: narcissism.
A convention hall isn't good enough for the presumptive Democratic nominee. He plans to deliver his acceptance speech in the 75,000 seat stadium where the Denver Broncos play. Before a vote is cast, he's embarking on a foreign policy tour that will use cheering Europeans - and America's top news anchors - as extras in his campaign. What do you expect from a candidate who already auditioned a quasi-presidential seal with the Latin inscription, "Vero possumus" - "Yes, we can"?
Obama finds criticism of his wife "infuriating" and doesn't want either of them to be the target of satire. Tell that to the Carters, the Reagans, the Clintons, and the Bushes, father and son.
There's no such thing as a humble politician. But when Obama looks into the mirror, he doesn't just see a president; he sees JFK.
In 1960, John F. Kennedy accepted his party's nomination with an outdoor speech at the Los Angeles Coliseum. But he waited until he was elected before going to Germany to declare "Ich bin ein Berliner."
The fashionistas have already noted Michelle Obama's affinity for chanelling Jackie. And it's hard to watch the Obama daughters "Access Hollywood" interview and not think about Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr. back in the days of Camelot.
So far, Dad is only promising to get the kids a dog, not a pony named Macaroni.
Republican John McCain has the opposite challenge. As a candidate, he's shrinking, thanks to a series of gaffes, stumbles, and generally uninspiring speeches.
But McCain has one thing going for him: the appearance of modesty.
Part of it is physical. McCain is stiff and awkward, the result of age and injuries from his years as a prisoner of war. That, too, is a contrast to Obama's sleek physique, the consequence of youth and a George W. Bush-like passion for working out.
But with McCain, there's also the sense of a man who made mistakes in life and acknowledges them.
McCain's humility comes through in his book, "Faith of my Fathers," which he wrote at age 63, after completing a career in the US Navy and moving onto politics. Obama wrote the more self-reverential "Dreams from My Father," after he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review.
The McCain campaign is beginning to jump on the ego issue. "I don't know that people in Missouri are going to like seeing tens of thousands of Europeans screaming for The One," a McCain aide quipped in response to Obama's upcoming visit abroad.
The conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh regularly ridicules "The Messiah also known as Obama." And "The Audacity of Obama" is turning into a ready-made take-off on the title of the Democrat's second book, "The Audacity of Hope."
The downside for Obama is how much his ego stands to resonate beyond the political right.
Last January, the online Slate Magazine debuted "The Obama Messiah Watch."
In February, a blogger for the left-embracing Mother Jones commented on his uneasiness over the candidate's messianic complex: "Does this post play unhelpfully into the pernicious and growing Obamaism-as-cult . . . that we'll likely see repeated over and over by the right wing if Obama gets the nomination?" blogged Jonathan Stein.
"It does. Sorry. But Obama's rhetoric makes an undeniable suggestion: that his election, not an eight-year administration that successfully implements his vision for America, would represent a moment in America of the grandest, most transformative kind. And that's a bit much," Stein wrote.
When the Obama Girl video first surfaced, Obama told the Associated Press, "You do wish people would think about what impact their actions have on kids and families."
That's good advice. He should think more about the impact of his ego on voters.
A presidential candidate is supposed to get bigger on the national stage. That doesn't mean his head should, too.
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