The dazzling hubris of President Obama

Rex Murphy:

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We've seen him in action for a bit more than six months. What we can say with confidence, now that we have the evidence of his actions, is that had he run on (a) transforming the U.S. economy by massive federal government intervention, (b) taking an owner's stake in the automobile industry, (c) transforming the rules of America's energy economy, (d) instituting a national health-care system - all of these simultaneously and in the centre of a financial meltdown - Barack Obama wouldn't merely have lost the election, he wouldn't have got as many votes as gnarly old Ross Perot did in an election long past. He wouldn't, in other words, have beaten a bad-tempered, egotistical spoiler.

We have also seen enough to make some observations on the observations of his once and now-no-more mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. You will remember when the ravings of Mr. Wright finally got too much for the candidate, when the more pacific words of the “great speech” on race that he could “no more disown him than I can my white grandmother” were rendered inoperative by Mr. Wright's persistently obnoxious presence. Mr. Obama pushed him aside.

The pastor had one last shot of his own about his onetime “son.” That was the line, “He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do.” We know what he meant by “politician”: one who is “forced” to say one thing to get elected, and do another; a person who conceals an agenda under cloudy rhetoric, a person whose calling – politics – is implicitly, essentially, deceptive.

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I call it the politics of fraud. Murphy attributes it to all politicians, but one of the things that good Bush in trouble was his refusal to play that game on most occasions. To be sure his critics charged him with it especially on Iraq, but they were the ones who were rewriting history to meet their agenda.