Obama's First Real Election

Barack Obama is an odd bird in American presidential politics. Not because he’s black, but because he is so far out of the norm that he doesn’t instinctively follow all the standard moves. American politicians have a certain standard set of rituals, just as American baseball players do. A Russian shot-putter who switched to baseball would just look different.

The examples of Obama’s subtle oddities are many. The biggest ones are his deep, public bows to foreign potentates, an act that alienates him from more than two centuries of American public behavior. Those showy bows were not accidental. They were planned, and they reflect his frothing resentment against this country. This is the “Up Yours, America!” administration. The Roman emperor Caligula once appointed his horse to the high position of consul, to show his contempt for the Roman Senate. In the long history of human politics, symbolic acts of contempt are a dime a dozen. Rebellious kids do them all the time.

Ann Coulter points out that Obama hasn’t won many contested elections: most of the time, his opponents drop out after some private scandal suddenly blows up in public. If Emil Jones, the Godfather of Illinois politics, is backing you, then yes, officially sealed divorce papers do have a tendency to get unsealed at a crucial point in a campaign. If you’re married to the daughter of a Chicago ward boss, then you probably get miraculous Acts of God helping your path to power. And if you’re the racial messiah running against Hillary Clinton, then yes, the lockstep left can decide in the middle of the primary campaign that Bill and Hillary are racists after all these years. It’s like magic. No wonder Illinois’ favorite son came to national politics feeling like a god.