The Many Faces of Barack Obama

posted at 1:13 pm on September 30, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Obama ]   

Barack Obama opened his closing remarks to the G-20 summit last week by feigning resentment at missing out on pancakes at Pamela’s Diner, a Pittsburgh mini-chain famous for their big breakfasts. The remark, which was greeted by polite laughter, seemed innocent enough. Except that if ever there was a president who was less the pancakes-and-sausage type, I must been asleep during his presidency. Obama, who if anything looks underfed, boasted during the campaign of eating only organic egg whites for breakfast. And he looks the part: lean and hungry. And angry, at least beneath the surface. Despite his occasional pretense toward joviality when the cameras are on, he comes off for the most part as utterly humorless and at times petulant.

So why go through the motions of pretending to have missed out on a wondrous local treat? Partly, it was a typical act of glad-handing, letting the people of Pittsburgh who hosted the event know that he knew his way around their fair city (though the two branches of Pamela’s closest to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, where the summit was being held, were in neighborhoods that had been the scene of riots the day before). More importantly, though, the mention of missing out on great pancakes was intended to show he’s a regular guy, who also chows down on burgers (someone hide the French mustard!) and beer (even if only at summits on the White House lawn).

All of which raises the troubling question of who Barack Obama really is. The answer, if one exists, has been a jealously guarded secret. A. J. Rice hinted at the question of Obama’s identity in Human Events during the campaign:

Obama is a Rorshach test: liberals see in him whatever they like. They are free to assign to him whatever belief they hold most dear because he has no record, no substance to limit their fantasies. He enables bratty child armies of baby boomers to place their political wishes beneath their pillows and dream of a “post partisan” future, whatever that means. [...]

We’re supposed to believe that Ba’rorschach Obama is a revolutionary and a reformer. He’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and JFK combined.

Plus Abraham Lincoln and F.D.R., both of whom Obama claims as inspirations. But unlike King, Obama seems more than willing to judge people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character, having sat for 20 years in the pews of a black nationalist church. And unlike Lincoln, who made difficult and often unpopular choices based on what he believed best for the country, Obama has so far taken the path of least resistance in making decisions. He has in fact been a slave to the demands of his party, forsaking their wishes and his promises to them only when it would negatively impact his poll numbers to do otherwise.

During the campaign Obama bristled at the suggestion that he was a liberal, yet since his election he has endeavored to move the country further left than any president in history, attempting to nationalize health care and energy for starters. He has snubbed centrist world leaders while expressing tolerance for and a willingness to sit down with dictators without precondition. He has professed to love his country while repeatedly tearing it down on foreign soil every chance he gets. He has apologized repeatedly for the country’s arrogance while not once extolling its greatness or exceptionalism. He himself has been guilty of arrogance, toward his own countrymen, while bowing before kings.

I don’t know what Barack Obama wants to be when he grows up. But I sure that some day, he — and we, the American people — get a chance to find out.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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