Did I miss inauguration day?
Really, did I sleep through the election? Or was it canceled and Barack Obama anointed World Savior US President by popular acclamation? That must be the case since, according to Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, President Obama has already done his victory tour of D.C. (emphasis added):
Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee.
Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president's) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally.
Along the way, he traveled in a bubble more insulating than the actual president's. Traffic was shut down for him as he zoomed about town in a long, presidential-style motorcade, while the public and most of the press were kept in the dark about his activities, which included a fundraiser at the Mayflower where donors paid $10,000 or more to have photos taken with him. His schedule for the day, announced Monday night, would have made Dick Cheney envious:
11:00 a.m.: En route TBA.
12:05 p.m.: En route TBA.
1:45 p.m.: En route TBA.
2:55 p.m.: En route TBA.
5:20 p.m.: En route TBA.
The 5:20 TBA turned out to be his adoration session with lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, as if for the State of the Union. Capitol Police cleared the halls -- just as they do for the actual president. The Secret Service hustled him in through a side door -- just as they do for the actual president.
Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."
As he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama's biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris.
No kidding, Dana. I thought Bill Clinton kissed the mirror in the morning, but Obama can't take his eyes off himself. It's amazing to think that a man with such a meager record of accomplishments can so buy into his own hype. I mean, there really is nothing there behind the pressed shirt: no articles published as editor of the Harvard Law Review, a mediocre record as a community organizer, voting "present" 130 times as a state senator, and no major accomplishments in the two years he spent in the US Senate before running for president.
And for this he's earned the right to say "I have become a symbol...?"
Typical of liberal elitists, Obama has forgotten that Americans, while we love our elites, don't want them to act like they're superior to the rest of us. FDR, whose blood was as blue as you can get in this country, held "fireside chats" with the nation during the depths of the Great Depression. He didn't talk down to the people; he made them feel he was one of them, like friends talking in the living room at night, reassuring each other.
FDR became a symbol for the nation. He didn't declare himself a symbol.
I've many times teased Obama about the cult of personality that's sprung up around him from his adoring followers, calling him "the Prophet Barack" and "the Harbinger of Hope and Change." And I knew he was somewhat vain: after all, one doesn't run for president without having a hefty sense of self-worth.
But this is ridiculous.
There's one thing Dana Milbank forgot to mention about Obama's vanity: in Greek mythology, Hubris was often followed by Nemesis, the vicious goddess who punished the prideful and boastful.
Obama had better be careful, or he may well find Nemesis has set a trap for him on the way to the victory parade.
LINKS: More from Blue Crab Boulevard, Jennifer Rubin, Dean Barnett (and here, for the frantic Democratic reaction), Sister Toldjah, and Daniel Halper.
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