Roger L. Simon thinks Obama’s deranged, and Roger’s the son of a good psychiatrist, so he knows what he’s talking about. I don’t doubt that our president has his issues–just look at his nutty mother, consider the impact of being abandoned by dad–but I don’t think that just putting Obama on the couch is the best way to understand him.
Put him in the classroom instead. Because he’s the stereotypical American undergrad at a stereotypical Ivy League college in the age of political correctness.
He doesn’t much like America or Americans, or the “former colonial powers” like Britain. Like so many would-be intellectuals, he admires lefty writers and screenwriters and actors and actresses. He likes the downtrodden, like the Palestinians, but he’s overcome with awe for the occasional cool (non-Western) monarch or emperor (whether Arab or Chinese). He probably has a Che tee shirt tucked away in a drawer, don’t you think?
He doesn’t know much history (he thinks Muslims invented printing), geography (his America has 57 states), or economics (he believes you can reduce health care costs by adding millions to the public rolls).
The most important thing to this president is how you feel and what you say, not all those annoying facts (50 states, the Chinese invented printing, and you increase deficits when you spend more). And, like most students, when the debate goes badly for him, the president makes fun of his critics–when he actually lets them talk a little bit. Remember when he hosted a few Republicans in the White House so he could listen to what they might say about health care…and then talked twice as much as they did?
As a typical undergrad, Obama loves to talk, and loves to talk about peace and justice. You know, the really important things. His new nuclear policy is right out of a college bull session: “Why don’t we just promise not to use them?” Nukes are bad, ugly things. Doesn’t everyone agree that the world would be better off without them?
Well, grownups don’t necessarily agree. It all depends how you get there, and what the others do along the way. We do have real enemies, but our undergrad-president understands their ire and shares their pain. It’s up to us to make things right. And so he apologizes, worrying more about our nukes (about which he has done something) than Iran’s (we haven’t done a thing).
Finally, he doesn’t seem to realize what a mess he’s making. And when he gets his grades, he blames the professors (we the people, in this case) for being unfair.
That’s the sort we’ve been graduating for a generation or more, isn’t it? Did you really think we’d never get one as president?
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