Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
The video of school kids singing the praises of Barack Hussein Obama was not only indoctrination, but ironic.
"For all your great accomplishments," the kids sang, "we all doth say 'hooray! ' "
Other than getting elected, what accomplishments could they be singing about?
Even Saturday Night Live, not exactly a right-wing production, lampooned the president last week for having accomplished two things: Jack and squat.
None of the president's domestic initiatives have caught fire - in fact, his health care proposal is more unpopular the more he talks about it. And soldiers are dying in Afghanistan while the president seems to be waffling about whether to commit to winning what he called a "war of necessity."
George Stephanopoulos, a former Bill Clinton aide and host of This Week on ABC, noted the White House had tried to intervene in a handful of state political races recently and been ignored.
This is more than a matter of politics, though. It's of grave concern to American prestige and power to see the U.S. president viewed as entirely feckless, weak and irrelevant.
"The world adores him and ignores him," quipped columnist George Will on This Week.
Mr. Will methodically and devastatingly ticked off the ways in which the world has ignored our president besides the now-infamous Olympics rebuke: He asked Israel to stop building settlements, and it said no; he asked Palestinians to engage with Israel and they said no; he asked Saudi Arabia for a gesture toward Israel and it said no; he asked Iran to do this or that and it said no; he asked Honduras to restore its power-grabbing president and it said no; he asked India and China to join the U.S. in reducing greenhouse gases and they said no; he asked NATO to take terror detainees and to send troops to Afghanistan and it said no.
"Saying no to (this) president is a habit," Will said.
Both Will and liberal colleague Cokie Roberts said Sunday the president's ill-fated trip to win the Olympics for Chicago - without any indication beforehand they'd succeed - showed poor judgment.
"What's alarming," Will said, "is whether it indicates a belief on the part of the president, which is that there is no problem that will not melt before the sunshine of his charm."
You needn't just take a conservative's word for it. Editor Marty Peretz of the liberal New Republic magazine wondered, "If Obama could not get Chicago over the finish line in Copenhagen, which was a test only of his charms, how will he persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear weapons capacity? ...
"What I suspect is that the president is probably a clinical narcissist."
What's worse is that Mr. Obama springs from a wing of the Democratic Party that is ashamed of America and its power. Even the New Republic editor writes, "I know that the president believes himself a good man. My nervy query to him is: 'Does he believe America to be a good country?'"
Ultra-liberal editor Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation amazingly defended Obama's speak-softly-but-carry-no-stick approach on This Week Sunday, saying, "The world is marching on its own terms. America's no longer a superpower."
If so, that seems to suit some people just fine.
