Barack Obama, the one-term rock star

When Barack Obama was running for president, I thought three things:

• His politics scare me;
• He's brilliant;
• He's a complete egomaniac.

Now, three months into his regime, I find that I have scratched the second assertion off the list. Instead, I find myself leaning towards labeling him a spineless dimwit (so much for that Ivy League education--feel free to come defend him, liberals who smeared Bush the same way for eight years). But his politics do scare me and he's proven himself to be a bigger egomaniac than I thought possible.

How so? I've never seen a guy put his interests ahead of his nation's to the extent this joker has. His desire to be universally adored has put the interests of this nation at dire risk.

I don't know what it is about the Dems, but they have developed a habit of running utter, blatant egomaniacs for president. I'm not talking recently, either; I'm talking about for the last century. Woodrow Wilson? Total egomaniac. FDR? The same. JFK thought he could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to and LBJ thought his stuff didn't stink. We all know Clinton wanted the whole world to fawn all over him, and Obama's even worse. The only one who probably doesn't get painted with this broad brush is Harry Truman, who may have been the most humble president in 150 years.

And no, I haven't forgotten modest little Jimmy Carter from smalltown Plains, Ga. From firsthand knowledge, I can tell you Jimmuh loves him some him. What a twit.

The Republicans, for their multitude of faults, haven't run egomaniacs (instead, they put cabinets and executive staffs together that are filled with them, which is no good either). From firsthand experience, I can assert that neither Bush is an egomaniac--41 ran for the presidency out of some kind of "duty"; 43 certainly is plenty confident, but not egomaniacal. He could be considered delusional, however, because he really does think God decided he needed to run for office. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. The issue at hand is the current egomaniac-in-chief.

Obama's desire to make himself loved has, in large part, come from denigrating the United States and our position in the world. Almost all of that has been in his continued attempt to denigrate George W. Bush and his administration. Ok, you won; you get to do that. But there are better, more diplomatic ways to establish a difference between your administration and the previous one than coming out and apologizing for crap the U.S. doesn't need to apologize for.

Obama thinks that, if he's personally liked, then everyone will get along with the United States. Bill Clinton thought the same thing. Well, Bill Clinton was adored overseas, and the U.S. got taken advantage of for eight solid stinking years. I don't mean in places like Kosovo or Bosnia; I mean places like Iran, Iraq and Libya, where our supposed European allies were smuggling equipment, supplies and weaponry to rouge regimes. Places like South America, where drug smuggling went unchecked, corruption reigned and neo-socialist movements gained strength. Or North Korea, which took the autographed Michael Jordan basketball and kept on with its nuke program. And, of course, there's Sudan and Afghanistan, which allowed Osama bin Laden to run around unchecked.

GWB did a lousy job coming in off the bat of not reasserting a strong American foreign policy; that changed after 9/11. The whole world changed then. Bush correctly noted that the protection of American citizens was his primary objective and he didn't care whose toes he stepped on to make sure they remained protected. The Euros hated him for it. Many Muslim nations despised him. Other nations feared him.

They all respected him.

Nobody respects Obama at this point. So far, he's shown, in his advanced state of mental superiority, that he's not out to upset anybody. He wants everyone to be happy (with him). He wants to apologize for our being rude and assertive. He wants to apologize to the Arabs for their misguided thoughts that we're at war with Islam (even though Bush basically jumped up and down for seven years saying the exact same thing).

All of these things are both stupid and unnecessary. In the geopolitical scheme of things, other countries get it when you do what you have to to protect yourself. They may not like it, but they sure as hell don't expect you to apologize for it. It's a different story if you're committing something like genocide, which we're certanly not.

But Obama's willingness to appease goes well beyond the current day. He wants to get rid of all nukes, a pie-in-the-sky idea originally pitched by Ronald Reagan (one I doubt he would endorse now, because of the people who now have nukes). In laying out his vision, he criticized the U.S. for using them to end World War II. He can criticize the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but doesn't have the decency to go to Normandy and visit the U.S. cemetery there. You know, the one filled with the bodies of the men killed on D-Day.

He didn't want to upset the Germans. Hey, Barack, are you seriously trying to win over the NAZIS?

Who knows? He might be. He wants to be loved. He wants everyone to say, "Aww, he's so nice. He's so not Bush." He gets off on the adoration of the masses, as we knew from that speech he gave in Berlin as a candidate and his acceptance of the Democrat nomination at a football stadium. The fawning of the international community makes Obama feel good.

And, while he's sucking up the love and affection of people who don't vote for him, the people at home are hearing about how our nation sucks, how we've just been horrible to the whole world and have done nothing right. To boot, the Great Barry Apology Tour is happening while the economy continues to tank and his debt-anvil stimulus package fails to do a damned thing.

So, here you go, Barry: the Euros love you. They will now take advantage of you. The Arabs love you. They're already taking advantage of you. None of them get to vote for you. We, the people of the country you've been stepping on do. And you've rapidly squandered a lot of the good will you had when you came into office.

You've got a lot in common with Jimmy Carter, Barry. You have that desire to be adored, you negotiate from a position of weakness, a fondness for larger government and no real concept of economics. And you love you some you.

If you don't pull your head out, you'll also be gone in four, just like Carter.