The Discerning Texan

Charles Krauthammer continues to demonstrate why he is a National treasure, in his latest WaPo column entitled "The Audacity of Vanity". This is just a taste--it must be read in its entirety to be fully appreciated:

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.

After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: " I am the one we've been waiting for." Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his lectern, until general ridicule -- it was pointed out that he was not yet president -- induced him to take it down.

I mean, no kidding this is astounding to me--this is like a bad scratchy film from the 40's. If you ask me, people are underselling how creepy Obama truly is--He is starting to resemble a level of narcissism rarely seen, especially in American politics. Hitler and Mussolini showed these traits, sure; Napoleon, Kim Jong Il... But this is America. We don't do the "Dear Leader" thing here. Only it seems to me that this is exactly what Obama is trying to pull off.

And it isn't just me that's creeped out by Obama; still something in my gut says that Obama resembles something much closer to Hugo Chavez meets Winston Smith, than he does to any American President, ever. What I am witnessing this summer seems more like a scene from The Manchurian Candidate or an old Alan Drury novel.

And then--even if you chalk all that up to just some sort of siege mentality, paranoia or something...(I mean, it amazes me too... but reread that Krauthammer piece and just think about it).

And then you start to look at Obama's actual record:

• Consider Obama's experience, compared to any other candidate. (He has NONE. Hell I have more leaqdership experience, and I'm not bragging...)
• Consider his (now disowned) friends of the last 20 years. Weather Underground terrorists; seedy mob figures in Chicago. And of course, the Reverand Wright.
• "Community Organizer"?? That is a code term for professional agitator. This is the guy who hires and coaches the protesters for hire when things needs to be stirred up; he helped to run ACORN, for God's sake. This guy was in the middle of the the Code Pinks, the Pelosi Berkeley nutjob left. The radicals. Does anyone out there not get that??
  
• And then there is this... unbridled narcisissm. I mean Obama wants to accept his nomination in a freaking stadium. All that is missing here is Albert Speer,