Topic: Liberal Fascism
Surely I’m not the first to not that self-regard lies at the heart of the progressive world view. So it’s not surprising that our first progressive president of the postmodern era should also be our first celebrity president.
Some might quarrel with that formulation. JFK is certainly remembered as a rock star, Ronald Reagan hailed from Hollywood, and Bill Clinton received the extensive coverage on the front page of the National Enquirer. But (with perhaps the partial exception of Clinton), they didn’t think of themselves in celebrity terms. Even Clinton, who was so clearly in love with himself, probably spent most of his time in the White House talking about outer things.
Not so Barack Obama. If we know one thing about him after nearly nine months, it’s that his presidency is all about him. Obama’s use of the first-person personal pronoun has been promiscuous enough to attract the attention of the media. His speeches refer constantly to—himself. He will provide health care for the masses, he will fix the economy, he will defeat the Taliban. The American soldier crouching in a fighting position somewhere on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border might reasonably wonder why he’s needed at all, with Barack Obama in the fight.
George Will, who did the math, reports that in his speech to the Olympic Committee, President Obama used the pronouns I and me 26 times in a speech of 48 sentences. I was not surprised to learn this. Will also notes that Obama's address was, by any reasonable standard of political rhetoric, “dreadful.” Having read the speech myself, I can only agree:
We stand at a moment in history when the fate of each nation is inextricably linked to the fate of all nations—a time of common challenges that require common effort. And I ran for President because I believed deeply that at this defining moment, the United States of America has a responsibility to help in that effort, to forge new partnerships with the nations and the peoples of the world.
Nice of him to remind the Olympic Committee why he ran for president, wasn’t it? And I like that bit about the inextricable link between all nations—which, as Will notes mordantly, raises the question of how the fate of Chad, say, is linked to that of Chile.
This is precisely why, despite the triviality of the stakes, the failure of Obama’s Olympic bid was significant. It called attention to the man’s overweening vanity—a character flaw that has already crippled his presidency and that might, if not forcefully checked, destroy it. But who might check it? Certainly not the President's better half. In her pitch to the Olympic Committee, Michelle Obama used the first-person personal pronouns 44 times in 41 sentences.
