Barack Obama’s most conspicuous quality, if you want to call it that, is shameless arrogance. His trip abroad was like Hitler’s tour of Italy in 1938. Before you dismiss my view as that of a party hack tearing down the opposition, read Susan Estrich’s column on FoxNews.com. (Estrich was Michael Dukakis’s campaign manager in 1988).
First, Presidential candidates rarely campaign in war zones, and for good reason. American politics traditionally sort of stopped “at the water’s edge,” as the saying went. It was never completely true, but more mature politicians took steps to appear that they put their country before their parties and candidacy. Not this ass.
Second, he hold himself immune (with the help of a fawning press) from the consequences of his own words. There is seemingly not an issue on the planet on which he does not simultaneously hold 3 or 4 mutually exclusive positions. Pointing this out earns his scathing, superior, Harvard put-down. “You’re not smart enough to undertand the complexity of my mind,” he seems to tell us.
Third, in his Germany speech, he told the world that it should allow him to remake it in his image and likeness. As we know, many people in many countries bristle at American calls to adopt our ways. When a first-term Senator travels to Europe to tell them they fucked up the planet and only he can fix it, well, that gives a whole new meaning to “ugly American.”
Fourth, he dissed wounded troops in Germany and, like a petulant four-year-old, blamed it on the Pentagon. We now know that the Pentagon had made elaborate preparations for his visit. Obama personally turned his back on the troops when he learned that there would be no photo-ops.
Fifth he turned the Wailing Wall into a campaign headquarters and lied about where the Obama posters came from. This act of arrogance brought shouts of “Jerusalem is not for sale,” from the locals who were offended by his crass commercialization of a holy place.
Americans (63 percent according to Rasmussen) don’t believe the trip made him more presidential. In a separate poll, 45 percent say Obama’s too inexperienced to be president.
His trip seems to prove that 45 percent right. Not only was it the work of a man inexperienced on the world stage, it gave a sense of naivite and immaturity to a man who seriously lack gravitas to begin with.
Or maybe it’s just mad wanderings a very arrogant candidate.