Posted on 03/17/2008 9:48:37 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Arrogance is a common vice in presidential politics. A person must be more than a little self-important to wake up one day and say, "I belong in the Oval Office."
But there's a line smart politicians don't cross — somewhere between "I'm qualified to be president" and "I'm born to be president." Wherever it lies, Barack Obama better watch his step.
He's bordering on arrogance.
The dictionary defines the word as an "offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride." Obama may not be offensive or overbearing, but he can be a bit too cocky for his own good.
The freshman senator told reporters in July that he would overcome Hillary Rodham Clinton's lead in the polls because "to know me is to love me."
A few months later, he said, "Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there."
True, there's a certain amount of tongue-in-cheekiness to such remarks — almost as if Obama doesn't want to take his adoring crowds and political ascent too seriously. He was surely kidding when he told supporters in January that by the time he was done speaking "a light will shine down from somewhere."
"It will light upon you," he continued. "You will experience an epiphany. And you will say to yourself, I have to vote for Barack. I have to do it."
But both Obama and his wife, Michelle, ooze a sense of entitlement.
"Barack is one of the smartest people you will ever encounter who will deign to enter this messy thing called politics," his wife said a few weeks ago, adding that Americans will get only one chance to elect him.
Obama's cool self-confidence got him into trouble in New Hampshire when he said Clinton was "likable enough," faint praise that grated on female votes who didn't appreciate him condescending to the former first lady.
Privately, aides and associates of Obama tell stories about a boss who can be aloof and ungracious. He holds firmly to views and doesn't like to be challenged, traits that President Bush packaged and sold under the "resolute" brand in the 2004 election. For Bush, those qualities proved to be dangerous in a time of war and in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
If arrogance is a display of self-importance and superiority, Obama earns the pejorative every time he calls his pre-invasion opposition to the war in Iraq an act of courage.
While he deserves credit for forecasting the complications of war in 2002, Obama's opposition carried scant political risk because he was a little-known state lawmaker courting liberal voters in Illinois. In 2004, when denouncing the war and war-enabling Democrats would have jeopardized his prized speaking role at the Democratic National Convention, Obama ducked the issue.
It may be that he has just the right mix of confidence and humility to lead the nation (Obama likes to say, "I'm reminded every day that I'm not a perfect man"). But if the young senator wins the nomination, even the smallest trace of arrogance will be an issue with voters who still consider him a blank slate.
That may seem unfair to a candidate who's running against Clinton, the former first lady who is the model of overbearing pride. This is a woman, after all, who claims experience from her eight years as first lady but won't release her White House records; who trails Obama in delegates but deigned to suggest he'd be her running mate; and who has more baggage than Samsonite yet says Obama lacks "vetting."
But voters expect arrogance from Clinton and her husband, Bill. It's part of the package. It's a 90s-thing. The Clintons' utter self-absorption comes with a record of achievement and brass-knuckle passion that Obama cannot match — and that Democratic voters know could come in handy against GOP nominee-in-waiting John McCain.
Voters won't cut Obama as much slack on the humility test because he's sold himself as something different. While rejecting the "me"-centric status quo and promising a new era of post-partisan reform, Obama has said the movement he has created is not about him; it's about what Americans can do together if their faith in government is restored.
The power of his message lies in its humility. As he told 7,000 supporters at a rally last month, "I am an imperfect vessel for your hopes and dreams."
Nobody expects Obama to be perfect. But he better never forget that he isn't.
he probably took lessons from the clintins...the biggest arrogant losers in the world.
If the media acted like a bunch of teenage girls welcoming the Beatles, I would be a arrogant too.
Now, many people -- people on the Left -- are saying that Obama is rather arrogant.
Perhaps the Left should look in the mirror and recognize what many people -- normal people -- already know: The Left is arrogant.
Don't forget about "I'm entitled to be president."
-PJ
Very well spoken!
He has no blood ties to any African Americans who are descended from American slaves, except to his own daughters. He's half-Kenyan and half-white American by birth. The number of American slaves whose ancestry went back to Kenya was zero, or close to it. He chose to reject the white side of his ancestry and to adopt an African American identity, probably because of his far-left political views...that way he could identify with the oppressed of the world.
Besides being anti-white, his mentor Jeremiah Wright is anti-capitalist.
Obama might be arrogant, but pleasant - his wife is just “mean-spirited.” She is elitist, yet believes she is a victim nonetheless.
She’s an affirmative action creation. She’s a meritless fake who takes $350,000 a year from the public to do some make work job that a decent admin could probably do for $35,000 a year. Her whole career is a tribute to diversity rules and racist promotion. UGH! Geraldine Ferrao was right!
The bottom line is nobody outside his inner circle knows who Obama really is or what he believes. The best indicator is his 20 year association with a pastor and a church that even Oprah Winfrey left for being extremist anti-white and anti-American. Other than that, we’re being asked to vote for a pig in a poke for President. No thanks.
I never thought that I would see a spouse of a presidential candidate who was more of a radical, narcissistic, arrogant, hubristic, self-entitled, and maddening solipsist than Hilary Clinton. To the nation’s dismay, I think we have found her. She is the loose cannon Benito Mussolini face of liberal fascism that Barack Hussein Obama is so careful to hide. Barack Obama is more practiced at keeping the mask up. But in the liberal Hyde Park ghetto that she lives in Chicago, attending cocktail parties with her coterie of liberal U of C academics, Black South Side DemonRat pols, public sector sinecures, NGO flacks and liberal Sun Times columnists, EVERBODY she knows thinks and feels this way.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama’s resentments toward her country and it’s citizens were undoubtedly nourished by the effect that her set-aside affirmative action appointment to Princton had on her. It would appear that she was unable to reconcile her black cultural nationalist/separatist philosophy with her tenure at Princeton, a place for which she was wholly unsuited by dint of preparation and talent, if her poorly written senior thesis is any indication. Rather than appreciating the AA slack cut her by the lib profs, she chose to lash out at what she saw as condescension and maybe some pity from them. She felt that she didn’t belong and she probably didn’t, but her racial sensitivity antenna read racism and bigotry rather that contemptuous pity. Her artificially inflated ego couldn’t stand that and she has mutated an enormous shoulder chip ever since.
Now we can only hope that the Barack He who must not be middle named Obama campaign does not muzzle her and deprive the GOP of a priceless asset. She is a spousal version of Jeramiah Wright. But from what I hear that is a dangerous proposition for any worker in that campaign. She appears to be as unmanageable and ornery as the Hildabeast.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/JC04Aa01.html
You refer to Michelle Obama’s “poorly written senior thesis” at Princeton. Is it available somewhere on line so we can evaluate it ourselves?
Got it for you right here.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html
Interesting. Thanks.
Hillary, her husband, their enablers, their sycophants, their supportive propagandists, have already been a million times more destructive than Michelle.
I guess she may have the potential to top Hillary, but I do not see it at this point in time.
Run Hillaryous Run!
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