Breaking News: This Guy Agrees with Me

In several posts I have suggested that Barack Obama does not care much about being re-elected in 2012.

Toby Hamden agrees with me in this article in the Telegraph (UK).  (Astonishingly, he neglects to cite to my trailblazing posts.)

We disagree somewhat on Obama's thinking.  I have written that Obama cares only about the approval of his social-justice-redistributionist academic and leftist journalist constituency, the only people he respects.  These people will lionize him and hire him even if he goes down to defeat in 2012.   Electoral failure in the future cannot rob him of his schoolchild's title of Our First Black President, for which he will be (justifiably) noted forever, no matter how lousy a president he turned out to be.

Hamden takes a different view, speculating that Obama is thinking ahead to becoming a figure on the world stage in a "post-American" era.  In fact, these positions are not so far apart.  Hamden writes:

"Obama does not suffer from self-doubt.  He has long seemed so convinced of his own virtue that to question his motives is illogical.  Increasingly, his pronouncements carry the tone of one who believes those who disagree are stupid or bigoted.

*   *   *

"In Berlin in 2008, Obama cast himself as a 'citizen of the world.'  He has dismissed the bedrock notion of American exceptionalism by describing it  .  .  .  as little more than narrow patriotism.  Elite opinion among liberal Ivy League types -- of which Obama is the embodiment -- holds that we are already living in a post-American world."

That's right.  He is looking forward to the time when he need move only among -- and answer only to -- liberal opinion leaders.  However, I don't think he will become a respected world leader.  Oh, he'll be greeted politely by those who are already delighted at the weakening of the United States that began several administrations ago (Republicans most assuredly included) and that he has greatly accelerated.  He is not respected -- he seems almost to be regarded as a faintly comical figure -- among leaders of Western democracies. 

He is, in short, Jimmy Carter.

Unlike Carter and Bill Clinton, however, Obama will never travel to hostile countries to free incarcerated Americans in hostile lands.  He'll never pound nails into a Habitat for Humanity home; he'll never co-chair disaster relief efforts with George W. Bush.   That's a far too, too  .  .  .  practical a use of his grand and mostly self-imagined moral authority.  Let the politicians do stuff like that. 

I see for Obama a rather sad old age.  Oh, he'll do fine in the decade or so after he leaves office, serving on the Harvard faculty (good luck finding him in a classroom -- this is not an industrious man), chairing left-of-center foundations (again, mostly honorarily), speechifying vaporously around the world, with that odd head-swing of his as he pivots from teleprompter to teleprompter.  But in the long run, after the history books acknowledge his historical significance, the next paragraphs will note his failed promise.  He will not be influential, as Bill Clinton has been (aided to some degree, in his case, by the visibility and talents of Mrs. Clinton, but mainly because of his political intelligence and resonance with voters).   For future generations he won't be much more than a picture on a plate. 

And the guy whose profligacy they're still paying for.

It's really too bad.  I didn't vote for the guy, but there was promise there.   Turns out he's just another pol who confused the title with the task.

Is Michelle Distancing Herself from Obama?

What on earth has happened to the spicy Michelle Obama? This is not a shy lady. Neither is she a woman without strong views on the news of the day. For awhile there, we would hear from her with some frequency on matters of public interest.  When Obama took office, I had expected that we would see a FLOTUS in the Hillary Clinton mode, very much in the foreground as an advisor to the President, and vocal in support of the administration’s policies. I thought it likely that she would seek public office herself someday.

I still think that.

And that’s why I find it most interesting that, as her beloved (I’m not being sarcastic here) husband is suffering an appalling decline in his personal popularity, and his initiatives, one after the other, leave the center who elected him mostly aghast, she is reportedly devoting her fierce intelligence and legendary energy to the encouragement of organic arugula. True, her gardening efforts have called attention to the levels of lead in urban soils, but other than that not even Michelle Malkin has found anything overtly political in the First Lady's switch in fertilizers from sewage sludge – really – to “White House compost, crab meal from the Chesapeake Bay, lime and green sand,” according to The New York Times. (Oops, I spoke too soon.)

I confess that it has occurred to me that Mrs. Obama might have her finger a little more firmly on the pulse of public regard than does her man, and is looking forward to a time when she might want to offer herself up for voters’ approval. A prominent public embrace of POTUS’s widely loathed – at least for now – initiatives on health care, immigration, judicial appointments, international blame-taking, and all the rest would make deniability, uh, implausible:

“I stand before you now as one who, according to the Congressional Avoirdupois Office -- created with bipartisan support at my request -- advocated for policies that resulted in a net aggregate reduction of 157 million tons of suet from the growing bodies of our nation’s children and adolescents during the four years I served this country as its First Lady. That, in turn, has reduced childhood diabetes and other lard-related illnesses to the point where our nation can safely reduce its reliance on professional healthcare, which, as you know, has declined in recent years for some reason." [Wink, eye-roll.] [Wild cheering.]

I’m not saying that her trademark project of fighting childhood obesity is unworthy. Every FLOTUS has assigned herself some uncontroversial cause or other, and this is a pretty good one. But during this period of enormous change accompanied by enormous controversy, her disappearance from the hustings is notable. Thinking ahead, that one is.

By the way:  Turnips, carrots, spinach, chard, black kale – the President has reportedly vetoed beets – it’s not surprising that Malia and Sacha have lost weight. What’s surprising is that they haven’t run away. If you’re invited to the White House for dinner, you might sneak in some Skittles for the young ladies; and, as a gift for the host, Obama’s own personal weight-loss aid:   a carton of Marlboro Lights.