Charles Krauthammer on the vanity of Barack Obama

Charles Krauthammer pens a blistering description of the level of vanity present in the mind of The Chosen One, Barack Obama.  Here’s a sneak peek:

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.

Read the whole thing.

I wonder, though, if he’s right on his assertion that “Americans” (used in a general sense) are catching on to the fact that the guy running for president on the Democrat side has an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore.  Conservative poljunkies know it, but is the average voter paying attention to more than just the glowing soundbites uttered by the mainstream news mediots about the candidate they’ve made it perfectly clear that they support?  I’m not getting the sense that they are.

Bill Maxwell, a black columnist from the St. Petersburg Times, pens another good opinion piece this morning on Barry O. (via ST reader GWR).  Snippets:

You had better mind your manners with regard to Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

You can’t disagree with him. You can’t question the legitimacy of his many platitudes and promises. And you had better watch it when you offer a litany of his flip-flops or point out his crass opportunism.

Be forewarned: If you say, sing, write, draw, paint or sculpt anything unflattering about Obama, expect the Spanish Inquisition. The salvational fervor and unfiltered euphoria surrounding the man have cast a halo around his head. A halo, as you know, suggests something otherworldly.

[...]

That’s what satire used to be about. In the Obama era, however, satire may be satire only if it pokes fun at anyone except the Haloed One. If it pokes fun at Obama or subjects related to the Obamas, it’s described as being “crude,” “tasteless and offensive,” “insensitive,” “racist” and so on.

The hypersensitivity coming from Obama and his minions is dangerous. Does anyone who’s half literate not know that the New Yorker, in its singularly liberal way, lampoons everything and everyone? Nothing, especially a flawed individual, is sacred. That’s a good thing.

If Obama’s swooning, humorless supporters continue to force critics to whisper, to shut up or to explain their artistic renderings, our precious gift and right of free expression will diminish if Obama is elected in November.

These people need to know that some of us cherish free expression. They also need to know that if Obama needs to be protected from the satirist’s rapier, he doesn’t deserve to be the president of the United States of America.

Indeed.