Barack Obama, The Virtual President

What is up with the Obama's and Europe? As the press hyperanalyzes recent controversies involving our President, the First Lady and Great Britain, and downplays the enormous p*ssing contest Obama's gotten into with the Czech Republic, OffHisMeds is left to wonder if they are a result of rampant megalomania, rampant cluelessness, or both. OffHisMeds also suspects that these recent contretemps reflect just the kind of heavy-handed diktat that Obama and the Democrats have accused George W of practicing, garnering cheers of approval from the Usual Suspects in Europe who so delighted in portraying our former President as an out of control Cowboy who imposed his will on the world.

Whatever his legitimate faults, W looks positively light on his feet in his dealings with Europe compared to our President in Training, and lest anybody forget, by the time he was done, his influence had resulted in explicitly Socialist leaders being overthrown by Conservatives in France, Italy and Germany. The results of Obama's first significant exposure to other world leaders are not near so auspicious, nor do they bode well for him.

First, there was the fuss over gifts exchanged between Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Obama a few weeks ago when Brown visited D.C. Brown offered Obama a rare book and a penholder fashioned from Lord Nelson's hip bone (or somesuch). In return, Obama gave Brown a batch of DVDs of "classics" of American cinema that wouldn't play on Brown's Brit DVD player. Oh yeah, and Obama also gave Brown's kids some Hot Wheels. Then he dissed Brown by not giving him a state dinner at the White House. Then an aide notified the British that they shouldn't expect preferential treatment since they're only one nation out hundreds.

Classy.

These gestures were followed the other day by a gift from the Obamas to Queen Elizabeth of an iPod full of "photos, videos and Showtunes". The mental images this generates in one's brainpan are excrutiating: One of Obama's seemingly inexhaustible supply of Webheads busily ripping content off the Internet for the iPod. Later, Her Majesty - earphones firmly in place and iPod jacked to her bicep via a velcro strip - is seen resolutely jogging around the Palace and rocking out to All That Jazz. Later still, she discovers that the recharging unit is incompatible with the Royal outlets, and the thing goes dead.

I wonder if Obama paid all the appropriate royalties on that content?

Next up, he decided to teach the Czech Republic a lesson after their Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek declared last week that Obama's Stimulus Package and other spending plans were "a road to hell", and other Czech leaders declared their unease at Obama's suckup to their former jailer, Vladimir Putin. So before arriving in the Czech Republic, he cancelled a meeting with Topolanek, cancelled plans to attend a State dinner in his honor with President Vaclav Klaus, and his press secretary declared that Obama and Michelle would instead have a "romantic private dinner".

Now, I don't mind so much that Obama went all the way to The Czech Republic just so he could urinate in their shoes personally. And I don't so much mind that he did it to the hardy nation that is one of the living symbols of a continent freed from tyranny by dint of their own resolve and so much American blood and treasure. And I don't so much mind that Obama saw fit to reserve his tantrum for men who fought so bravely - and recently - for the freedom to express an opinion of any kind. I guess in Obama's world, opinions critical of the U.S. seem to be reserved for dictatorships like Iran, China and Russia.

No, what I do object to is Obama going all the way to Central Europe just to get his freak on with The First Lady. If Air Force One and all the other presidential perks aren't enough to put lead in the Presidential pencil, a taxpayer-funded romantic dinner with his clothes-horse wife in Prague isn't going to do the trick either. I also object to their announcement of a romantic dinner as being newsworthy. Can you imagine the reaction if W had pulled such a stunt?

I detect a pattern here. Obama's personal gestures to the Brits, the Queen and the Czechs are very much like his self-promotion as "The One", not to mention his approach to governance. In so relentlessly pressing on the British gifts of such an impersonal nature, and in so publicly flogging the Czechs for daring to criticize him, Obama is merely repeating the modus operandi he employs in dealing with the American people. Intent on dragging his countrymen - not to mention the rest of the world - into his universe, this Elitist Hump is as tone deaf as politicians get. Like some vain coquette at the Cotillion absolutely convinced of her desirability, Obama preens as he demands to be courted. It's not Obama that is out of touch, it's Gordon Brown that needs to come around. Same with the Queen. Same with Topolanek. Same with America.

And it doesn't help that Obama exists in a world more virtual than any we have ever seen. His every word is scripted, his every utterance relayed to him by the ubiquitous TelePrompTer (rarely shown to the public by The Media, but feeding him not only his "spontaneous" speeches, but answers to questions at press conferences, complete with stage instructions such as "make forceful palms up hand gesture to convey sincerity"). And then the Left gushes at how articulate he is compared to Bush.

Please.

As to Michelle's having touched the Queen, while there is no evidence that such a thing is inappropriate, let us not lose sight of the fact that, by stage managing the gesture into an international "incident", The First Couple have connected with the British Elites in a way sure to hit their sweet spot as George and Laura Bush never did: You matter. You are important. Your obscure and - might I say - explicitly un-Democratic and un-American obsession over royalty is important. We, the President and First Lady, can relate to your discomfort at the violation of protocols so obscure as to seem silly, but the Royal Person must never be touched.

Obama can relate on a personal level to the Queen's dilemma. During the campaign, then-candidate Obama had an encounter with then-V.P. nominee Biden at the Democrat convention, when Biden approached Obama from behind and placed his hand on the Royal Shoulder. What a priceless moment, as Obama shot Biden "The Look", a piercing stare that conveyed in a glance all you need to know about this self-important blowhard; and no, I'm not talking about Biden: "I am special; I am The One; nobody is allowed such familiarity with my personage". Biden, not the quickest study but a man used to public ridicule, gamely removed the offending hand, and was rewarded with a smile of forgiveness, albeit reservedly. It was a classic moment in politics, and more revealing of the man than anything else he had ever said or done, yet it was virtually ignored by The Media, inasmuch as that would provoke questions about his character that they so desperately do not want the American people to ask.

But such is the self-absorption of a generation (and it's Icon), that spent too much time in front of a TV, too much time celling, texting and Tweeting, too much time being told they were wonderful, and entirely too little time contemplating right and wrong, The Golden Rule, hard work or God's admonition to selflessness. If Al Gore infamously invented the Internet, President Obama is infamously the first world leader to have been birthed by it. While some cynics look at his hyperly over-scripted persona and see nothing more than a really tricked out Facebook profile, his admirers see The Future.

In Obamaland, all the world's a First Person Shooter Video game, and Barack is the Shooter. That's why he not only wouldn't understand the fuss about him inflicting a bunch of electronic crap toys - twice - on our British Cousins, but he would be offended by them taking offense. Not only could he not relate to criticism from the Czechs - people with actual street cred in the fight against communism and still savoring the first sweet breaths of freedom - he would self-importantly dismiss them. And never mind that in so doing - along with making unilateral concessions to Russia on everything from missile defense to Iran - that he has signaled to the former Soviet Empire that it may begin reconstituting itself.

None of this is even remotely a part of his reality. It's kind of like when a cannibal offers you the first tender morsel at a feast in your honor. It matters not that you're not a cannibal yourself, much less a virtual Child of our electronic age; the cannibal is going to assume you like human flesh, since that's the only perspective his monomania allows him. Lacking the ability to do anything other than admire himself in an electronic mirror, Obama likewise is simply going to assume that everybody else is just like him, and if they're not, that they should just defer to his worldview because, well, he says so.

I take comfort in the knowledge that we have seen his sort before, and all too recently; Al Gore and John Kerry being the most prominent examples. Manically scripted, pompous and self-righteous, they both dominated the political scene, right up until the point that they didn't, the good sense of the American people finally having exerted itself. Having had the benefit of two full years of exposure to Obama, there's only two differences between Obama, Gore and Kerry. He won, they lost. He's black, they're white.

Come 2010, there will only be one difference.