Too Big or too Small
John Hinderacker, Powerline
A lot of people are having fun with the idea of Barack Obama's postmodern presidency. Mark Steyn suggests that Obama may be the first president for whom the office just isn't good enough:
Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that for Barack Obama, governing America is "an interesting sociological experiment", too. He would doubtless agree that the United States is "the place on Earth that, if I needed one, I would call home." But he doesn't, not really: It is hard to imagine Obama wandering along to watch a Memorial Day or Fourth of July parade until the job required him to. That's not to say he's un-American or anti-American, but merely that he's beyond all that. Way beyond. He's the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he's condescending to the job - that it's really too small for him, and he's just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.And so the Gulf spill was an irritation, but he dutifully went through the motions of flying in to be photographed looking presidentially concerned. As he wearily explained to Matt Lauer, "I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain, talking..." Good grief, what more do you people want? Alas, he's not a good enough actor to fake it.
I almost choked on my coffee while reading this. It is a fact, we all know it intuitively, Barry knows that he is destined for so much more, maybe Commissar of the Northern Hemisphere. The Germans have an old saying used to describe a person who once was riding high and then is reduced to a meager situation, the person is then "baking small loaves." How will Barry respond in the near future when he has lost his political capital and is further marginalized? Bobzhuman...
