Obama Plus One

I have a simple proposal for future US presidential inaugurations: All the ex-presidents should take the new guy out the night before the swearing in and get him really, really drunk so that as he's poured into the limo for the ceremony he has a hangover the size of Maryland. It may not cause any real improvement in American governance, but it should make the inauguration day a lot more interesting and the speeches a lot shorter (My fellow Americans... Excuse me! Make a hole, dammit!). We might also gain some insights into the character of the most powerful man in the world as he gamely appears at the various parties and tries to avoid eye contact with the shrimp platter. Of course, we haven't seen anything like that since Grant, so I'm not holding out much hope.

I tend to avoid presidential inaugurations for more interesting things, like my dentist lecturing me on gum disease, but the "historic" Obama swearing in has been blaring out so many media outlets that you literally could not turn on a television or radio, go to a cinema, walk into a Starbucks, or even pick up a cell phone without the circus jumping out at you, so it was a little hard to avoid. My reaction to it was pretty much what I suspected. It was the usual American version of pomp that the Queen's opening of Parliament manages to trump without even trying, the Big Speech by Obama was his usual boilerplate that the news media instantly declare should be chisled in marble, but no one will remember a word of by the end of the week, the poem was the usual poetry-free zone, and the closing benediction could have won the Great Sermon Handicap. I came away from it all thinking that if this shindig cost $150 million, then someone has trousered a nice little nest egg.

Far more interesting, as in disturbing, was the comments on the proceedings by politicians and media types about the "historic" nature of the Obama presidency. If you aren't already aware, this historiocity is because Mr. Obama is America's first black president.

As I've said before, since I'm not American and I've met my fair share of black statesmen up to and including the rank of president, I couldn't really see the fuss, but apparently this is seen as a symbol of America putting its racist past behind itself and so on and so on. Fine. Fair enough. And if Joe Lieberman had won the election it would no doubt have been equally historic because it meant America had renounced all calls to anti-semitism, but I'm sure more than a few people would have demanded a very large reality check if Mr. Lieberman's Jewishness was harped on every five minutes and the question would be asked whether things were getting a bit out of hand. After all, the whole point of this election was to elect the leader of the free world and the man with his finger on the nuclear trigger, not to select a symbol of black aspiration and liberal white guilt assuagement.

As for this being the fulfillment of Dr. Martin Luther King's dream, it's ironic that the end product of his vision of men being judged by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin is an election where a large percentage of the voters apparently chose the winning candidate precisely because of his skin. At least, that is the impression of the obsession over an issue that in this day and age should be as trivial as Obama being the first American president to have three nipples.

Regardless, Mr. Obama is now the President of the United States and for all the pressures he will be under when he crawls out from under the ticker tape, at least he won't have to deal with the psychotic hatred that the Left developed for his predecessor. For my part, I am drawing the line at holding him personally responsible for BBC America preempting Top Gear the night before the inauguration. Of course, he shouldn't expect the opposite either and wake up on his first day of office to see the whole nation as one wearing Obama badges, greeting him with a smart salute and a cheery "We're all behind you, Mr. President." The only time I saw that was for FDR and that was in a WPA cartoon where an animated Roosevelt did a happy little song and dance.

Whenever I voice any suspicion of Mr. Obama's fitness for office, I'm invariably told that it's unreasonable and that I should give the man a chance first. "Give him time to show us who he is, what he stands for, and what he's capable of. At the very least, he is your president, too." No, sorry, he isn't. British subject, remember? I don't need to be as deferential as his fellow countrymen should be. I may respect him as head of state because he is the embodiment of the nation and I can no more insult him in that capacity that I can Her Majesty, but as head of government I can call him a fat head if I believe his cranium is a bit heavy in the adipose tissue department and will if the time comes.

Besides, I've been down this "give the guy a chance" path before back in '97 and the guy in question was Tony Blair (who Mr. Obama bears a frightening resemblance to). I went through ten years of everyone giving that mountebank chances and all we've got to show for it is a bankrupt country, a nascent police state, a huge swatch of our ancient institutions destroyed or corrupted, gutted armed forces, out of control illegal immigration, street crime at insane levels, abject surrender to the EU, and Gordon Brown as the albatross he left as his parting shot. If Mr. Blair is any example of what's ahead, maybe, just maybe, it would have been better to find out about Mr. Obama before electing him rather than treating him like a prize in a bran tub. He could be a centrist, a Communist, or a narcissist. He could be awesomely capable or an utter incompetent (which is preferable depends on what he's trying to accomplish, If he's a socialist, I pray he's hopeless at it). We just don't know. Now that we're stuck with him, it seems to me that the only sane attitude to take is an open mind combined with one eye fixed and knees flexed for a punch.

My own suspicion is that he's Tony Blair with the messianic complex replaced by a narcissism so shallow that it makes Bill Clinton look like Woodrow Wilson and that he will try to keep the crest of his popularity riding high by voting "present" for as long as is humanly possible until political debts or unavoidable circumstances force him to act rather than give a stirring speech and then God knows what will happen. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe he'll prove a masterful centrist leader who will bring peace and prosperity and make the lion lie down with the lamb. If so, I'll be the first to applaud, which is infinitely preferable to the cold satisfaction of standing on the fantail of the Titanic telling everyone that I was right about the iceberg. I might also win the lottery even though I never buy a ticket, so I'm not very hopeful. Still, the next couple of years will be interesting times.

And remember what the Chinese said about those.