While Putin was making a premodern fool out of himself, blustering and bullying, and lying on the global stage, Barack Obama confirmed most of the Russian stereotypes that he was a postmodern metrosexual. Putin gets up every morning to annoy Barack Obama, piqued not just that he is weak, but that he is sanctimonious and weak. Obama tries to ignore Putin, who grates on him like some Russian version of the folks who tailgate with their Winnebagos at a NASCAR race.
Rarely on the world stage have we suffered through two such extremes as an erstwhile community organizer theorizing against a former KGB agent. If only Putin were a run-of-the-mill college president, then Obama might order a takeover of the faculty lounge. Or if Putin were a local bank president, Obama, the SEIU, and Acorn might yell on his lawn about lending more money to the inner city. Alas, even Chicago is not Russia.
These are quite simple rules. They eliminate the genius quite as surely as they eliminate the unfit. No Edison could ever qualify; no Lincoln, either, with his soiled linen duster and his habit of interrupting important business with funny stories. I am sorry to forego the companionship of such men in my rather dingy building here in the wholesale grocery district. But I comfort myself with the thought that Cromwell built the finest army in Europe out of dull but enthusiastic yeomen; and that the greatest organization in human history was twelve humble men, picked up along the shores of an inland lake.
Obama is a political dilettante whose skills are entirely people skills. Valerie Jarrett’s people skills are negligible and concentrated on only one person, but unlike her boss, protégé and adopted son, she has the endurance and drive to pursue an issue indefinitely.
Barack Obama isn’t driven. Throughout his entire adult life there have been people there to open doors for him. It seemed natural for him to let Valerie Jarrett drive his political career and his administration to do the things that he lacks the attention span or the focus to do.
Obama has become a door-to-door insurance salesman. His appearance on “Between Two Ferns” was humiliating not because the leader of the free world was taking part in a lame comedy routine, but because Obama was doing it to sell a product. Presidents have gone on Leno, Letterman and Saturday Night Live, but they have never sat awkwardly cracking jokes in the hopes that a few young people would stop by their website and bail them out by buying some of what they’re selling.
Fourteen days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was murdered by Islamists, President Barack Obama stood up in front of the United Nations and declared that the “message” of a movie virtually no one will ever see “must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity,” that “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” and that we all should “condemn incitement against Sufi Muslims, and Shiite pilgrims.”
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So many things wrong in so few words. Why this video, and not Theo Van Gogh’s Submission, or Lars Vilks’ animation of Mohammed wanting to go to a gay bar, the “Super Best Friends” episode of South Park, or Funny or Die’s “How to Pick a Pocket”? Is it the degree of the insult, the craptasticness of the production values, the size of the release, or the vociferousness of the outrage expressed?
