4/26/13 5:10 AM EDT
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| The author says the president is giving off a 'L'état, c'est moi,' vibe. | Reuters |
(POLITICO) - Tuesday morning, a peculiar announcement trickled out of the White House press office: President Barack Obama would be holding a moment of silence for the victims of the Boston bombings. At the White House. By himself. No press or other intruders allowed.
Except the White House photographer.
That Obama assumed Americans would want an iconic photo of him privately mourning the victims of the bombings was emblematic of a kind of hubris that has enveloped the president and his White House as the president commences his second term.
Hubris in a leader is an obnoxious thing, leading to imperiousness in governing. And it’s also a dangerous thing for a second-term president, often spelling trouble.
Unfortunately, this president’s acts of high handedness and self-absorption have accumulating in the past several months at a blistering pace.
Even as the nation’s workers wilted under a struggling economy and high unemployment, Obama decided to take two round excursions to Hawaii at taxpayer expense over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. Just six weeks later, he jetted down to Florida for a luxury four-day golf vacation where he played with Tiger Woods. Meanwhile Michelle Obama also took another vacation, skiing in Colorado.
Even as the sequester began to force those who work for him in the federal government to take furloughs and government services were scaled back – including, famously, the White House tours – Obama stepped up his golf, roaring out of the White House in his motorcade three Saturdays in a row for the 50-minute round trip drive to the Joint Base Andrews course.
In a true Marie Antoinette moment, Obama offered to pare back his pay by five percent as a show of empathy for those being furloughed. At annual salary of $400,000, that would force him to get by on a meager $380,000, in addition to a couple of hundred thousand extra dollars he can probably expect to make this year from book sales.
He had Memphis soul music legends throw a command performance for himself and the first lady in the East Room. He commended California’s attorney general for being the hottest of all the state AGs. He gave himself an exclusive viewing in the White House theater of the Jackie Robinson biopic, “42.”
On Saturday night, he’ll be partying with journalists and their celebrity guests at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association bash.
All while the nation continues to suffer under his stewardship of the economy.
When gun legislation he backed failed to pass last week, he threw an epic hissy fit in the Rose Garden, proclaiming his opponents liars who thought “it wasn’t worth it” to protect kids from gun violence.
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