Presidential Self-Esteem

 

“There is no limit to what a man can do, or where he can go, if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” – Ronald Wilson Reagan, Fortieth President of the United States

 

One of the intangible qualities that separate the great presidents from the rest of our presidents is an abiding sense of humility- the idea that whatever a president (or, for that matter, any leader) achieves, is the result of long hours and hard work, done by others, in pursuit of the greater good. Ronald Reagan had it. George Washington had it. Abraham Lincoln had it. Even George W. Bush and his father, George H. W. Bush, though certainly not great presidents, per se, still had an abiding sense of humility in the way they approached their respective tenures as president.

 

Barack Obama, quite simply, does not, which is the principal reason why he will never achieve greatness, period.

 

Certainly, there have been other presidents (actually, most presidents) who have missed the mark of greatness, largely as the result of either: grave misfortune (i.e. John F. Kennedy), perjury (i.e. Bill Clinton), impeachment (i.e. Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson), incompetence (i.e. Jimmy Carter), dishonesty (i.e. Richard Nixon), bad timing (i.e. Herbert Hoover), or, even in some cases, outright corruption (i.e. Warren Harding). Yet, when it comes to the absolute avoidance of greatness, nothing ensures lack of greatness like an over-abundance of self-esteem, in which history is replete with examples, going back millennia.

 

Barack Obama is nothing, if not arrogantly egotistical to the point of pathos.

 

It’s not entirely his fault, however. After all,

 

• When a young man is awarded academic honors, befitting far more deserving students who actually display academic promise, it’s no wonder that such a man begins to believe that he is the smartest thing on two legs. Anyone who has experience working with Obama will tell you that he acts like he is the smartest one in the room.

 

• When a man is elected to the nation’s highest office, without having achieved anything tangible to merit such a political victory, it’ s not a stretch to understand that such a man begins to believe that his sense of greatness is self-evident. Obama is awash in his own sense of greatness.

 

• When a man is awarded, for instance, a Nobel Prize for Peace, for having done nothing (other than to besmirch his own country on a post-election “apology” international speaking tour) to earn such distinction, it’s not surprising that than the man’s head might swell up a bit, or in Obama’s case, a lot.

 

• When a man is re-elected to that highest office, with the assistance of a fawning mass media who works, along with his campaign, to marginalize and discredit his opposition, and to gloss over any shortcomings (and there were many) during the incumbent’s first term, it’s no surprise that such a man begins to take on the trappings of a celebrity teen idol- and let’s be honest about this… Barack Obama is so saturated with adoration all around him, it’s no wonder he acts like an older version of Justin Bieber…..

 

So, even if Barack Obama achieved something… anything… of substance while in office, his own self-adoration would take away from such achievement. Even if the policies which he advocates were deemed to be truly beneficial to the United States, or even tangibly contributed to the peace and security of the free world, his ego would belittle such advocacy.

 

So it is with these thoughts in mind that we should consider his statement that he alone has “improved the Unites States’ standing in the world” and that American prestige and respect in the world “is at an all-time high”, when quite the opposite is true. Such statements are the sad utterings of an uber-narcissist, completely divorced from any sense of reality.

 

 

Our friends do not trust us, our enemies do not fear us and, Barack Obama, in six short years, has in fact, “fundamentally transformed the United States of America” from Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill” to the international equivalent of “Comedy Central”, whose audience includes Russia, China, Iran, Syria, ISIS and host of other bad actors who are rolling in the aisles of Obama’s pathetic theater- the “Theater of the Absurd”. Send in the clowns, folks, be it Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders or Martin O’Malley. After all, what else is left for us to lose?

 

-Drew Nickell, 3 June 2015

 

© 2015 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved