Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate.
He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting
cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins
-- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign
policy credentials.
What Obama does not seem to understand is that the
Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald
Reagan earned the right to speak there because his
relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its
knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this
wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy
visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin
ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that
was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend
West Berlin.
Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he
done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the
Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role
in the fight against communism, the liberation of
Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the
elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall
but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap --
called "a Europe whole and free"?
Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a
German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded
the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech.
(The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking
at other venues.)
Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated
opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism
in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees
a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a
presidential nominee with a wider gap between his
estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime
achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single
important legislative achievement to his name, a former
Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130
times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law
professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a
single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single
memorable article? His most memorable work is a
biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate
effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the
nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in
history -- "generations from now we will be able to look
back and tell our children that this was the moment" --
when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began
to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer
noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made
the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently
works alone.
Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king
ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute
sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power.
Obama has no such modesty.
After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are
the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the
royal "we," means: " I am the one we've been waiting
for." Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with
its own Latin inscription affixed to his lectern, until
general ridicule -- it was pointed out that he was not
yet president -- induced him to take it down.
He lectures us that instead of worrying about
immigrants learning English, "you need to make sure your
child can speak Spanish" -- a language Obama does not
speak. He further admonishes us on how "embarrassing" it
is that Europeans are multilingual but "we go over to
Europe, and all we can say is 'merci beaucoup.' " Obama
speaks no French.
His fluent English does, however, feature many such
admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife
assures us that President Obama will be a stern
taskmaster: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He
is going to demand that you shed your cynicism . . .
that you come out of your isolation. . . . Barack will
never allow you to go back to your lives as usual,
uninvolved, uninformed."
For the first few months of the campaign, the
question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now
is: Who does he think he is?
We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved,
uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said
on victory night, his rise marks the moment when "our
planet began to heal." As I recall -- I'm no expert on
this -- Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick.
Obama operates on a larger canvas.