The arrogance of the (self-)Anointed One

I wrote about Obama's arrogance a month ago¹. Jonah Goldberg addressed it last week. There have been others in between and since. And today, Charles Krauthammer joins in. The whole column is great, and he sums up the issue brilliantly:

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.

.

Read the whole thing...



¹ - Yes, I'm quoting myself here, but I liked it, and I want to run it again...

The natural humility which should be felt by one in his situation he attributes to himself as a virtue, and emphasizes the virtue by noting its profundity. The pro forma “knowledge of my own limitations” is, again, self-praise, calling attention to his self-awareness. There are no ego-less Presidential Candidates – one has to have an enormous opinion of one’s abilities and opinions to think that he should be the most powerful man in the world – but Obama is so convinced of his superiority that he cannot even do the obligatory self-effacement appropriately.