Outrageous Vulnerabilities
It's Still The Economy, Stupid
In Week Before Labor Day, Pointless
Palin's No Shrinking Violet
Danger Signals
Change vs. Change
Obama Off-Balance from Palin Flip-Flops on O'Reilly
Distant Drums At Sarah's Party
Martha's Big Adventure - Enquiring Minds Want to Know
Game Changer
The Unexamined Life
The Grand Old Party Line
JFK: Democrats' Role Model?
Palin, Pregnancy And The Pulpit
The Big 5-0
What Do Women Want Now?
Farewell To An American Hero
Palin-Bashing Press Keeps Swinging And Missing
Want Real Change? Quit Nominating Lawyers!
Harper's Index
Don't They Have Birth Control Up In Alaska?
Professor Bush's Economic Nostrum
Saving The GOP And The Unbearable Lightness of Being Sarah Palin
Building The Bridge
Married Liberals With Children
Mosdirection In Minnesota
Logical Consequencse
Which Ticket Really Will Deliver Change Voters Want?
Palin's Problem
Game On: Let The Race Begin
The Rush Is On For Palin, GOP
The Role of A Lifetime
What's So Terrific About Mccain's Palin Pick?
Why Obama's "Community Organizer" Days Are A Joke
A.S.P. -- After Sarah Palin
Stick With Sarah
McCain-Palin Will Flush Big-Spending GOP Ways
Most Sarcastic Campaign Ever
Report From A Forgotten War (5th and Last in a Series)
My Brain Tumor
Don't 'Misunderestimate' Palin's Power
Words On Words: How Do You Say 'Hypocrisy' In Romney-Speak?
On Shooting Taggers: Why Conservatives And Liberals Differ
Mccain Wants Moose Hunter In White House
Me For President
Welcome Back Dad
A Human-Resources Handbook
Palin's Gender Alone Won't Sway Women Voters
The Old John McCain
Palin's State Reaps The Windfall Profits McCain Decries
Finally, We Care About A Teen Pregnancy
McCain's Best Way
Media To Republicans: We're Sorry
Executive Experience Is a Joke -- Opinion
What Standards?
Blind Defense of Koran Abrogates Reality
We've Come A Long Way, Baby
Are You Better Off ?
The Invisible President



The Audacity of Vanity
Charles Krauthammer 7/18/2008
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Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Ronald Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President John F. Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush the elder -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans
have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

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Obama, Brandenburg Gate
By Rainer Hachfeld - Neues Deutschland, Germany * Posted 07/10/2008
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