Does Obama think of America as his and his alone?
At his news conference yesterday (first in nine months!), President Obama responded angrily to the announcement by Senators McCain and Graham that they will do everything they can to block the (potential) nomination of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to be secretary of state in Obama’s second administration.
The senators believe that Rice’s appearances on five news programs days after the Benghazi attacks, when she claimed that the violence was “spontaneously inspired” by the infamous Youtube video, might be good cause to fight her confirmation.
The senators “should go after me” instead of Rice, the president declared testily. Thus did he reveal what a trivialized vision Barack Obama has of America.
Go after me?
To Barack Obama, everything is personal; every obstacle to getting what he wants is a personal affront. That other duly elected representatives might object for sound reasons having to do with something old-fashioned like the good of the country is immaterial to him.
This is why he ripped the Supreme Court, with the justices in attendance, during a State of the Union speech. It’s why he tried to embarrass Paul Ryan during a speech that Ryan attended. And, for that matter, it’s why he insisted on transforming America’s healthcare system without a single Republican vote.
The man is a solipsist, and with his reelection that outsized sense of entitlement is likely to get worse, not better.
Lost amid all the sound and fury is that the president’s defense of Rice seems to contradict what he claimed during the second presidential debate to have told the nation about Benghazi:
The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime.But yesterday, the president explained that Rice’s TV presentations five days after the Rose Garden address reflected Rice’s “best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.”
If Rice’s “best understanding” of correct intelligence was that wrong, then she’s not qualified to be secretary of state. If the intelligence provided to her in her cabinet level position so many days later was wrong, then someone else at the White House is unqualified for another high-ranking position. Who?
