Wonderboy's Curious & Selective Sense of History

Tuesday's Wall Street Journal included an interesting piece by Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East Studies at The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, entitled Obama's Presidency Joins the Fray.

Mr. Ajami provided an very insightful view into Wonderboy's warped and biased use of history while president. For example, the First Rookie dismissed parallels between Afghanistan and Vietnam, because he declared himself to be young enough not to have 'baggage' from the latter US involvement.

The current US president then selectively took the comparisons to JFK and FDR which he likes, but eschewed JFK's combat experience and tough-minded attitudes on defense and anti-communism.

Ajami reminds us of Wonderboy's self-description, in Cairo, "as a student of history," thus making his selective attention to it the more troubling. One suspects the only history in which the president is interested is his own, so expansively detailed in his many autobiographies.

How does one write so much about a life devoid of real accomplishment, outside of, with a nod to that other Illinois resident who became president, 'fooling some of the people some of the time?'

Mr. Ajami writes,

"our president would have known that a command economy is alien to the American temperament, that unfettered government spending was bound to arouse the antagonism of the American people...."

He concludes by contending that "the real Obama presidency has just begun."

Many believe Wonderboy will now tack to the center and effect a self-rescue. No less an esteemed conservative pundit than Charles Krauthammer seems to believe this.

Personally, I don't see it like that. I just don't think Wonderboy has it in him to be another Clinton. Clinton was never an ideologue, whereas that's all Wonderboy really seems to be. And a self-involved, self-referential, egotist, at that.

But, as Mr. Ajami suggests, we'll have the next two years to find out if the current Oval Office occupant really understand history, or cares.