Let Your Rabid Leftist Friends And Family Go
The Holiday Survival Guide (Trump WON Edition)
New York Democrat Issues Warning to His Party About Hochul
Outgoing Biden Admin Exposed for Special Interest Corruption
A Quick Bible Study Vol. 243: What the New Testament Says About Fearing...
The Forever-Tarnished Legacy of Barack Obama
Avoiding Self-Inflicted Trade and Economic Wounds
Matt Gaetz for Florida Governor?
Trump to Create New Position to Deal With Ukraine
Giving Thanks Is Good For You
The Hidden Pro-Life Message You Missed at Miss Universe
The Border's Broken Vetting System: Why We Can't Wait to Fix It
Can We Take Back the English Language Now?
Trump's Strategy On Iran Could End Middle East Wars
Trump Names His New Agriculture Secretary
OPINION

Obama Has Shed His Vanity. Just Ask Him.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Nothing oozes hubris like Barack Obama putting on a humble act.

"There's a point where the vanity burns away and you've had your fill of your name in the papers, or big adoring crowds, or the exercise of power," the president tells historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in an "exit interview" published by Vanity Fair. "And for me that happened fairly quickly." Since he no longer revels in his own grandeur, he explains, he won't fall into the trap of making decisions out of ambition or "thirsty" attachment to the prerogatives of office.

Advertisement

Do tell.

Five years ago, Obama claimed that his accomplishments compared favorably to those of any president with the "possible exceptions" of Lyndon Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Now he says that if he'd been blessed with "the genius of an Abraham Lincoln or the charm of an FDR or the ... legislative acumen of LBJ," his terrific record might have been even more terrific.

So when Obama says that the "vanity burns away," what he apparently means is: Nothing changes.

There's certainly not much he thinks heshould have changed. "There aren't a lot of situations where I look back and I say, The decision I actually made or the course we actually pursued was the wrong course," he tells Goodwin. To be sure, the catastrophe in Syria "haunts" him "constantly," and he sometimes asks himself what he "might ... have done differently along the course of the last five, six years."

But he dismisses that idea as quickly as he raises it. Obama rejects any suggestion that his refusal to intervene as Syria imploded into the world's worst human-rights calamity might have been misguided. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions uprooted, refugee flows not seen since World War II, chemical weapons deployed with impunity, Russian warplanes back in the Middle East, the horrific rise of Islamic State, the stunning destruction of ancient Aleppo — Obama is quite sure his inaction had nothing to do with any of it.

Advertisement

"Arguments about what could have been done are wrong," he declares. Arming the rebels? Putting teeth into his "red line" warning? Imposing no-fly and safe zones to protect civilians? Heeding the 51 State Department diplomats who publicly urged the administration to carry out military strikes against Bashar Assad? "All those things I tend to be skeptical about," Obama says loftily.

Perhaps "a Churchill" or "an Eisenhower" might have come up with a better strategy, the president tells Goodwin. But he doesn't really believe it. After all, "the only problems that come to my desk are the ones that nobody else can solve."

If this president had a theme song, it would be Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien." Thanks to Obama's feckless foreign policy of appeasement, retreat, and "leading from behind," he will leave his successor a bloody, terror-filled planet, vastly more dangerous and chaotic than the one he inherited. In his fervor to pull US troops out of Iraq, to shrink America's global footprint, and to prove that a less assertive United States would yield a more peaceful world, Obama has presided over disaster. But he's confident that no one else could have done better, and he regrets nothing.

Early in his presidency, addressing the United Nations for the first time, Obama intoned: "I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world." A few days later, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee proved the point, announcing that Obama would beawarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts" to increase international harmony and cooperation.

Advertisement

Years later, the Nobel Committee came to regret its 2009 decision. But Obama is blissfully free of any such misgivings. He knows, after all, that everyone who disagrees with him is wrong.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Recommended

Trending on Townhall Videos