Obama received much deserved criticism during and after the campaign for his narcissistic self-regard bordering on (or crossing the border of) messianic. Obamessiah, etc. Alas, evidence of that tendency continues to manifest itself.
At the recent “Summit of the Americas,” for example, another episode may be even more revealing than his warm embrace of dictator Chavez, which has received more attention. First, here is a drippingly sympathetic appreciation of Obama’s performance from the Christian Science Monitor (“Chummy Obama, Chávez mark ’spirit of cooperation’ at summit”):
His determination not to be provoked by aggressive, anti-US leaders such as Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela typified the esprit de corps of the meeting….
That determination to bury old antagonisms was also present when Obama responded disarmingly to an hour-long opening speech by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, in which the former leftist revolutionary reviewed US action against Cuba including the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. “I’m grateful President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old,” he told chuckling leaders
From the other (sane) side of the spectrum, here is devastating put-down of that same performance by Mitt Romney (“A Timid Advocate of Freedom,” on National Review Online):
At last week’s Summit of the Americas, President Obama acquiesced to a 50-minute attack on America as terroristic, expansionist, and interventionist from Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. His response to Ortega’s denunciation of our effort to free Cuba from Castro’s dictatorship was that he shouldn’t be blamed “for things that happened when I was three months old.” Blamed? Hundreds of men, including Americans, bravely fought and died for Cuba’s freedom, heeding the call from newly elected president John F. Kennedy. But last week, even as American soldiers sacrificed blood in Afghanistan and Iraq to defend liberty, President Obama shrank from defending liberty here in the Americas.
Although I completely agree with Romney, I take Obama’s behavior more personally, and view his failure as more personal than ideological. What strikes me is not so much Obama’s failure to speak up for freedom as his passive silence in the face of a vitriolic attack on people he should regard, but clearly does not, as his family — his and our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children (well, maybe not his father). His response to this attack on all of us was a smarmy, squirrelly, cowardly attempt to distance himself from us with a failed attempt at humor: “Don’t blame me! Not my fault! I was only three months old!”
This aspect of Obama’s failure was captured perfectly this morning by Mark Steyn:
What struck me (aside from its unfortunate echoes of his self-absolvement with regard to what William Ayers did when young Barack was eight years old) was the reductive narcissism of the answer. Barack Obama is not a banana-republic coup-leader re-setting the calendar to Year Zero. When he travels abroad, he represents two-and-a-third centuries of constitutional continuity. The impression he gives that that’s all just some dreary backstory of no real relevance to the Barack Obama biopic he’s starring in 24/7 is very unusual in the chief of state of one of the oldest democratic polities on the planet. And not entirely reassuring.
Not entirely reassuring is, of course, that famous British understatement. In the redder precincts of America (and in more than a few of the blue) there are more direct ways to characterize obsequious silence in the face of vicious insults to one’s family, but this is a family blog and thus I’ll refrain from offering them here.
“Barack Obama is not a banana-republic coup-leader re-setting the calendar to Year Zero.”
With all due respect to Mark Steyn, I wouldn’t be too sure about that.