Beacon Street Journal

Despite howls of predictable protest from the media about him “going negative”, the recent McCain ad was as successful as it was timely in knocking the Chosen One down a notch or two off his lofty pretentious perch. The Obama-as-celebrity McCain campaign commercial was singularly auspicious as well.  In conjunction with recent media antipathy towards Obama’s arrogance, overnight, it has effectively helped change the tenor and tempo of the campaign by forcing people to ask once again: who is Barack Obama?

Replete with images from his Berlin speech, the ad successfully redefined the Obama campaign, at root, as nothing more than celebirity worship. For, when viewed through the cool and dispassionate lens of reason instead of media-driven hoopla, as more time passes, the speech in Berlin will be seen as an unparalleled disaster for the campaign of Barack Hussein Obama. For it is emblematic for all that defines the shallowness and absurdity of his candidacy: the unparalleled self-love and conceit, both wholly unwarranted, given the absence of any substantive accomplishments or the presence of any steadfast principle of character.  The ad went a long way towards stripping bare all of the misleading mythology surrounding Barack Obama. Perhaps now, more attention will be focused on Obama the mortal and less upon Obama the Exalted One. Upon close scrutiny, what this may reveal to the electorate is a man who is ill-informed, lacking in erudition and who has an appalling ignorance of history. 

For, perhaps now as the ether escapes from the hot air balloon, many will ask the fundamental question: how can a man, whose only substantive experience prior to a brief stint in the Illinois State Legislature as a community organizer in Chicago, lay claim to the mantle of beloved former presidents Kennedy and Regan, journey to the locus of their historic speeches and, attempt to put himself on a pedestal solely for his own gratification, by speaking to a European audience — for some curious and inexplicable reason — as a citizen of the world?

In a remarkable display of solipsism and overweening self-absorption, did he somehow believe that recitation of his by now hackneyed phrases, belabored domestically, repackaged as Obama-lite for foreign consumption, would make his speech the equal to the “Eich Bin Ein Berliner” or “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” historically consequential orations? What was he thinking? Is this fatuousness indicative of the measure by which we are to assess his acclaimed Judgment? Blinded by vanity and the false estimation of his own abilities, did he believe that all those blue-collar Hillary voters he must now court, and for whom his gassy rhetoric never resonated, would now be enthralled by more of the same New Age mumbo jumbo before a foreign audience captivated by his world citizenship?

How conceited and arrogant is this spectacularly unqualified man who has been suffering delusions that he is even marginally fit for the highest office of the land?  How badly did Obama recently overplay his hand?  Although it was the media that was largely responsible for puffing up this pretentious, conceited and obscure politician to the status of a mystical figure, there were signs that even his most reliable enablers could stomach no more of the bravado. Perhaps it was the Obama presidential seal, or maybe the heavy-handed and haughty manner in which some members of the press were treated on the recent foreign trip. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was the first to notice the unprecedented egotism bordering on megalomania when he wrote last week that ”Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee.”A Democratic Presidential nominee must labor mightily indeed to alienate certain members of the press, yet in an unrivalled and suffocating display of imperiousness, Barack Obama has managed to do just that, even if only temporarily.

The recent McCain commercial ridiculing his celebrity status illustrated all too well, the fundamental weaknesses and serious flaws of Obama’s candidacy. 

As his inflammatory and injudicious “dollar-bill” comments attest, this is a man, though pumped up to be a modern day Pericles, is wholly lost without his magic and indispensable teleprompter along with a good stock speech, written by those who think that delivery of the same vacuous, monotonous and vapid phraseology somehow will conceal that the man giving the oration is all style and not a shred of substance. In this regard, for Obama, the gig is up: after the pretentious display in Berlin, very few are going to be spellbound solely by the lofty rhetoric anymore. In view of his predilection to commit the most appalling extemporaneous gaffes on the campaign trail, who is it that cannot see the contradiction in the assertion, Obama is a great speaker? Who now, save those without a sense of humor, upon hearing that replacing all the oil we need is simply a matter of having our tires properly inflated, will not chuckle in disbelief that these asinine words escaped from the lips of the Chosen One? Is it any wonder then, that Obama would sooner give up his arugula than be forced to endure the verbal trauma of one-on-one debates against McCain with unscripted questions from the voting public and all the attendant further risk of ridicule to which he would be exposed?

The McCain ad inadvertently forced a rather injudicious response on the part of a thin-skinned Obama, who lapsed into his familiar duplicity on race by accusing those who dare to criticize him on any score with racism. This time however, his tired ploy blew up in his face. The Obama campaign was clearly stunned that McCain didn’t abide by the protocol endemic to and established by decades of Rockefeller Republicanism: cowering temerity at the mere prospect of being accused of racism by liberals. Though his steadfast apologists in the media may still attempt to ludicrously assert the McCain ad contained code words and symbols of racism, most people possessed of common sense, have scoffed at the idea, and instead, clearly see that it is, and has been, Barack Obama that has been using the race card as a crutch to shield him from critics who may reveal the utter shallowness of his candidacy.

By its ad, the McCain campaign wisely laid down a new marker in this election by refusing to obey the self-interested rules of engagement which Obama has sought to unilaterally impose on McCain with the consent of the media. The commercial was singularly auspicious for it has begun to expose the fraudulent pretences upon which the Obama candidacy was launched and by which it has continued to succor. The ad clearly illustrated the painfully obvious: Obama has overreached both in his rhetoric as well as in his presumptuous posturing. In light of the merciless mocking to which Obama was subjected in the ad, as his campaign moves forward, don’t expect to hear any more talk about the healing powers of the Exalted One. Now that the McCain campaign has signaled its refusal to be preempted in its critiques, watch for Obama’s glass jaw to be increasingly vulnerable.

But if robbed of all his magical and Mystical Powers, who then, is Barack Obama?  As evidenced by his latest fortnight flip-flop on off-shore drilling, and as spoken in the words of his longtime spiritual advisor and mentor, Obama is an ordinary electioneering and ruthlessly calculating politician, who will do and say anything if he believes it will secure him electoral advantage. Hardly the stuff of which New Messiahs are made…