He Is The One He's Been Waiting For

I know all Presidents have massive egos -- it's like a prerequisite for the job.  But Jonathan Last's profile of President Obama reminds of one fact that always stands out to me about him -- he seemingly never really laughs at himself, mostly because he really does believe himself to be something incredibly special.  Read the whole thing, but here's a good excerpt...

Obama’s vanity is even more jarring when paraded in the foreign arena. In April, Poland suffered a national tragedy when its president, first lady, and a good portion of the government were killed in a plane crash. Obama decided not to go to the funeral. He played golf instead. Though maybe it’s best that he didn’t make the trip. When he journeyed to Great Britain to meet with the queen he gave her an amazing gift: an iPod loaded with recordings of his speeches and pictures from his inauguration.


On November 9, 2009, Europe celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was kind of a big deal. They may not mention the Cold War in schools much these days, but it pitted the Western liberal order against a totalitarian ideology in a global struggle. In this the United States was the guarantor of liberty and peace for the West; had we faltered, no corner of the world would have been safe from Soviet domination.


President Obama has a somewhat different reading. He explains: “The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.” Pretty magnanimous of the Soviets to let the long twilight struggle end peacefully like that, especially after all we did to provoke them.

I have this feeling that if I invited the President to my daughter's birthday party, he'd show up sans gift (because the present would be his presence) and then be upset if the gift baskets didn't include copies of his books.  Then he'd insist on getting the corner piece of cake with all the extra icing.