PrintJuly 29, 2008
Are you listening, President Obama?
No sooner did "The Operative Word is Hubris" appear in yesterday's AT than yet more evidence turned up confirming Barack Obama's status as a millennial-era version of the ancient Greek victim of runaway pride.
In an essay on yesterday's online American Spectator titled "Barack Hubris Obama" (I know, I know... great minds, etc.) John Tabin discusses a recent incident that has gone strangely uncovered by the legacy media. One of Obama's advisors countered criticism of the European trip by stating:
"When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech [overseas], it is not apolitical speech or a political rally.""But he is not president of the United States," a reporter noted.
There you have it. The election, the inauguration, everything else is no more than ritual. Obama thinks he's already president, and will do whatever he damn well pleases, while the proles (that's us) fall to their knees and thank the heavens that they lived to see it.
You can go through American history since the era of the Founding, and examine this country's proudest and most unbending figures - Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis, Douglas MacArthur - and you will find no equivalent of such arrogance.
The only place where Tabin and I part company is his contention that there exist no signs that Obama will fail in his quest. There are plenty of them. What the great Greek dramatists sought to teach us was t hat these processes have a logic of their own. Take one step into hubris, begin thinking of yourself as a divinity, and the wrath of heaven will fall upon you, whatever you do to escape. Obama has taken that first step and more.
There was a conventional ending used by the Greek playwrights to underline the theme of fate. It went something like this:
In vain man's expectationsThe gods bring the unthought to beAs here we see.
Are you listening, President Obama?
