As Election Day approaches, President Obama is sharing a few important things about himself. He has mentioned more than once in recent weeks that he cooks “a really mean chili.” He has impressive musical pitch, he told an Iowa audience. He is “a surprisingly good pool player,” he informed an interviewer — not to mention (though he does) a doodler of unusual skill.
All in all, he joked at a recent New York fund-raiser with several famous basketball players in attendance, “it is very rare that I come to an event where I’m like the fifth or sixth most interesting person.”
When we run into him at an "event", you and I have a word for guy like this: an asshole. And I have to believe even some hardcore liberals would be wincing after reading these first few sentences. But never fear, the New York Times is here, to tell you that this behavior isn't only OK, it's proof of his superiority:
Four years ago, Barack Obama seemed as if he might be a deliberate professor of a leader, maybe with a touch of Hawaiian mellowness. He has also turned out to be a voraciously competitive perfectionist. Aides and friends say so in interviews, but Mr. Obama’s own words of praise and derision say it best: he is a perpetually aspiring overachiever, often grading himself and others with report-card terms like “outstanding” or “remedial course” (as in: Republicans need one).
Ah, if anyone needs the remedial course, it's author Jodi Kantor, and perhaps the editors who lets this inadvertently anti-Obama screed slip through censors (to be a felony offense after the re-coronation of The One, I'm told).
To be fair, the Times does dutifully place the race card here:
When Mr. Obama was derided as an insufferable overachiever in an early political race, some of his friends were infuriated; to them, he was revising negative preconceptions of what a black man could achieve.
But then seems to apply it, when the "G" word is uttered:
For someone dealing with the world’s weightiest matters, Mr. Obama spends surprising energy perfecting even less consequential pursuits. He has played golf 104 times since becoming president, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who monitors his outings, and he asks superior players for tips that have helped lower his scores.
Not sure if he can run on that accomplishment, Jodi...but then again, maybe she is trying to subtly spread the "practice makes perfect" case for Obama's re-election:
His idea of birthday relaxation is competing in an Olympic-style athletic tournament with friends, keeping close score. The 2009 version ended with a bowling event. Guess who won, despite his history of embarrassingly low scores? The president, it turned out, had been practicing in the White House alley.
Body language can't move that ball out of the gutter, Mr. President....assuming you want to...
But it seems even at the Times, reality is seeping in through the fortifications:
Those were not the only times Mr. Obama may have overestimated himself: he has also had a habit of warning new hires that he would be able to do their jobs better than they could.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a factionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted...
So, according to the Times, we have a man who prefers perfecting trivial pursuits (golf, bowling) to tackling the tougher jobs at hand - which happens to be what he was hired to do. All while pounding his chest about how he's the greatest ever, at everything. Insecure much, Mr. President?
Seems to me as if an unstable Obama, realizing he cannot be a good president, not to mention a great one, is now devoting himself to different ways to prove to himself he's still #1 (golf, bowling). He can't let go of the presidency, of course - it is the only buttress of his claim to greatness, even if he is just an empty chair - so will fight tooth and nail to keep a job even he knows, in the recesses of his soul, that he is simply not up to. Once again, when it comes to Barack Obama's ego, there is no sacrifice to great.
The Times calls this man competitive, a perfectionist, and an overachiever.
Were he a Republican, they'd be labeling him a dangerous, disconnected, ego-maniacal psychotic...
No comments:
Post a Comment