The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
The Audacity of Audacity
The New York Times lovingly describes President Obama’s delivery of his big speech in Ankara [Turkey] Monday:
Showing more self-confidence each day on his maiden overseas trip as president, Mr. Obama, in addressing a majority Muslim country for the first time, appeared to have prepared carefully for one particular line in his wide-ranging speech.
“The United States has been enriched by Muslim-Americans,” he said. “Many other Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country.
“I know,” he said, “because I am one of them.”
And then he paused.
Wow, he paused! Further evidence of his tremendous oratorical skills! What we most enjoyed about this passage, though, was how it began: “Showing more self-confidence each day . . .” Are we supposed to be awed by the man’s self-confidence?
Obama is the elected president of the United States. Just getting where he is requires an almost pathological level of self-confidence. If a meek man were elected president, that would be a man-bites-dog story.
Further, it was a commonplace even before Obama’s election that his ego was outsized even by presidential standards–big enough to fill a football stadium, and worthy of Roman columns.
After all that, is he really “showing more self-confidence each day”? We’re not sure it’s even possible. But if he is, we should all be terrified.
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