Jodi Kantor’s NYT profile of the “competitor in chief” paints a picture of a failing CEO distracting himself with trivial pursuits. The man who has his wife and friends claim that he spends every waking minute focused on jobs, it turns out, spends an awful lot of his time raising his bowling score and shave a few strokes off his golf score.
Kantor also paints a picture of a petty man who is full of himself, even when reading books to kids.
When he reads a book to children at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, Mr. Obama seems incapable of just flipping open a volume and reading. In 2010, he began by announcing that he would perform “the best rendition ever” of “Green Eggs and Ham,” ripping into his Sam-I-Ams with unusual conviction. Two years later at the same event, he read “Where the Wild Things Are” with even more animation, roooooaring his terrible roar and gnaaaaashing his terrible teeth. By the time he got to the wild rumpus, he was howling so loudly that Bo, the first dog, joined in.
I’m sure the kids loved it but, really, the best ever? He sounds like a narcissist.
“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
Obama needs to read up on Proverbs 11:2 — Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
Though he never ran a large organization before becoming president, he initially dismissed internal concerns about management and ended up with a factionalized White House and a fuzzier decision-making process than many top aides wanted.
Kantor’s piece shows a pretty unlikeable, inexperienced know-it-all who is failing at the one job the country most needs him to do. Because he already thinks he’s the bestest ever at everything he does.
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