Smile

A picture is still worth a thousand (adjusted for inflation) words. Particularly the photo in Tuesday’s WSJ, captioned: “President Obama Monday after speaking about his budget plan”

Following the President, at a respectful distance, was Secretary Geithner, looking every inch the toady.

In stark contrast was Obama’s bearing and expression. There was an almost ceremonial formality, a commensurate arrogance and a thinly veiled, generic, disdain.

Somehow it all seemed evocative of a tin-pot potentate who imagines he bestrides the world. Tragically and perversely, in some sense he does.

That photo was worth its weight (and Jerrold Nadler’s) in psychiatric and political insights.

The question of whether Obama is an implacable ideologue or a principled pragmatist is laughably inappropriate.

When Obama’s judgment seems as curious as it is questionable perhaps is because he doesn’t feel constrained by logic or facts.

As for truth, it’s a bourgeois morality.

Recent reversals could have inspired a serious reconsideration, but that would have required reason and humility.

Instead we witnessed a clumsy attempt to refute reality and “reconnect”.

There is a theory, somewhat out of fashion, that great men can influence events, I suspect that lesser men, given the leverage of office and authority can be equally influential.

Regrettably.

Take Three

This time with a little more feeling… Mr. President.

Fortunately we’re not making a movie, merely conducting the affairs of a still great nation.

A nation at war with an implacable, irredeemably insane foe (who shall remain nameless)

As the President made successive attempts at correcting his first, belated, comments, his often remarked style seemed remarkably sterile.

His characterization of  an aspiring mass murderer, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, as a “suspect” who “alledgedly” attempted to destroy an aircraft in flight, is either a departure from or willfull distortion of reality.

Abdulmutallab is not a criminal, though he’s been charged as one, in the conventional sense, but a war criminal whose “crime” is against humanity.

Obama’s embrace of legalistic proprieties as an appropriate response to chaos and carnage (our enemies weapons of choice) is Pavlovian, perverse, political or all the above.

Perhaps the President believes he can manipulate our perception of reality, if not reality itself, the way he has manipulated the gullible, uninformed or psychologically needy all his life …

Really, you shouldn’t have

” … my accomplishments are slight” admitted Barack Obama.

Indeed.

Yet why should he be held to a higher standard by the Nobel Prize Committee than he was by fifty three percent of the electorate.

The Nobel Peace Prize in its morally minimalist, politically correct form seems, upon reflection, well deserved.

Congratulations Mr. President.

For those who slept through the formalities in Oslo a few highlights and insights from Mr. Obama’s much acclaimed acceptance speech.

It should be noted that the soft bigotry of low expectations will significantly enhance your impression of the following excerpts.

“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war”.

” … we will not eradicate violent conflict in our time”.

“A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies”.

“I understand why war is not popular”.

“These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded”.

The speech has been exhaustively and creatively analyzed, a labor of love or idolatry. Allegedly it contains a statesman’s wisdom, a scholar’s erudition and a moral philosopher’s profundity.

I respectfully disagree with the pundits and stand with the President.

His accomplishments are “slight”.

They remain so.