This Politico story titled “The ego factor: Can Barack Obama change?” is full of rich creamy schadenfreude goodness. It includes Douglas Brinkley’s quote that “The worst thing that happened to Obama is he’s lost a lot of his aura. Even his friends think he’s thin-skinned and a bit highfalutin,” which is sure to be repeated endlessly in the Blogosphere in the coming months. But this item in particular stands out:
A 2008 New Yorker article quoted Patrick Gaspard, now the White House political director, describing what Obama told him during the job interview: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
And then there’s this:
In author David Remnick’s Obama biography, “The Bridge,” he quotes White House adviser and longtime friend Valerie Jarrett: “I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”
Or as Obama told another biographer, “You know, I actually believe my own bulls***.”
On the other hand, now we know what Obama saw in Joe Biden. Clearly, these men are remarkably kindred spirits; compare Obama’s quote above with this classic Biden moment from 1988:
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Obama is beginning to remind me of nothing more (or less) than the “hollow men” of T.S. Eliot’s poem:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us — if at all — not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
J.A.C.K.A.S.S. and Vice J.A.C.K.A.S.S.
Other than being the right color, Biden has the full package.
Apparently, being the right color is worth 52% in a Presidential election.
And security management should be handed to SM Sahai n Ashaq Bukhari. Obama will den declare Pak as terrorist country.itney zaalim hain dono