Posted by
netfotoj on Saturday, July 26, 2008 10:51:12 AM
As Ace
named him, Captain Bullsh!t stood before the adoring masses in Berlin and
delivered a speech that lacked only the burning torches and shouts of “Sieg Heil” to transport one back in time to the 1930s when another
charismatic leader took power with a ton of vague promises.
John
Rosenthal at Pajamas Media, cites the Nazi symbolism: “the
specific history of the ‘Victory Column’ makes its choice as
backdrop for Obama’s German photo opportunity at least ironic, if not
downright troubling. For what the candidate and his handlers have decided is
the appropriate ‘scenery’ for his Berlin appearance was, in effect, created by
none other than Adolf Hitler and his own maestro of political dramaturgy Albert
Speer.
The ‘Victory
Column’ as such already existed before Hitler and Speer decided that it
would form a suitable centerpiece for the ‘East-West Axis’: one of
the two major thoroughfares laid out in their megalomaniacal plans for a ‘new’
Berlin redesigned to reflect the power of the new German Reich. The polarity of
column and gate — with the two monuments providing dramatic points of
reference for the mass demonstrations so beloved of the Nazis —
undoubtedly figured in their calculations,” Rosenthal writes.
The Victory Column, in the background, was made taller and relocated for Hitler's 50th birthday celebration on April 20, 1939, with a massive
display of German military might including a parade of troops and army
hardware and an accompanying air show.
James
Lewis at American Thinker says the Berlin
scene is the product of Obama’s runaway
egotistical blind spot: “A Nuremberg-style mass rally
in Germany
is not exactly the natural stage for an American presidential candidate to strut
his stuff. It's exactly the opposite of the usual politician's
schtick in America.
"I'm just a little ole country
boy" assures the voters that you don't have the swelled
head.”
David
Brooks, op-ed writer at The New York Times, admits Obama’s schtick
has finally worn thin by hearing the same stump speech since Iowa.
“When
I
first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to
confess my American soul was
stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet quintessentially
American
campaign. But now it is more than half a year on, and the
post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of
Berlin, and it turns out
that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The golden rhetoric
impresses
less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more… the speech fed the
illusion that we could solve our problems if only people mystically
come
together… This was the end of history on acid.”
Brooks
concludes that Obama “has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of
saccharine show for the rock concert masses, and in Berlin his act jumped the shark. His words
drift far from reality, and not only when talking about the Senate Banking
Committee. His Berlin Victory Column treacle would have made Niebuhr sick to
his stomach.”
Lordy David, you sound like the Obama acid kool-aid has
worn off. You better go back to the cooler and get another drink before you get
fired.
Washington
Post columnist Howard Kurtz quotes another reporter who also sounds like his
kool-aid wore off, Chicago
Tribune columnist John Kass, who wrote of the Obama world tour coverage:
"McCain is now cast as the crabby uncle who visits and shrieks there's no
gin in your house," while Obama is "busy fighting off throngs of
reporters, a cast of thousands as urgent and impassioned as in those old
Hollywood biblical epics."
Kurtz also quotes Ralph Begleiter, a former CNN correspondent, now
journalist in residence at the University
of Delaware, who says the notion that Obama was making real news -- as
opposed to exploiting pretty backdrops -- is "a sham argument. Of course
it's a photo op. If he wanted to go to Afghanistan as a senator, he could
have done it."
I could be wrong and often am, but I think Obama's ego has finally been put on such obvious display with his over-the-top speech in Berlin that this will be the turning point when voters begin to ask, as Charles Krauthammer did a week ago, Who Does He Think He Is?
Slublog answers the question.
President Kennedy went to Berlin to make a speech declaring America's resolve to win the Cold War. President Reagan went to Berlin to make a speech that proclaimed the victorious end of the Cold War with "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"
Obama went to Berlin to offer himself to the world as the "new messiah." There's only one Messiah. And it ain't Obama.