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The Icarus Factor Any objective analysis of Barack Obama’s qualifications to serve as President of the United States, compared to any one of his forty-three predecessors, would place him squarely at the bottom of the list. He was elected to the presidency: a) because the one-third of our non-African American population who identify themselves as Democrats were so consumed with Bush hatred that they simply didn’t care whether Obama was even minimally qualified, b) because the large majority of African Americans saw only his skin color and merely assumed that the country could survive the kind of non-specific “hope” and “change” he promised, and c) because leftists in the mainstream media saw the Obama candidacy as some sort of expiating milestone in the history of race relations... it was their way of legitimizing their liberalism.
And now that they have been successful in their efforts to impose this Great Mistake on the American people, Democrats and their friends in the mainstream media find it necessary to paint Obama as something much more than he is.
For example, in his inaugural address Obama likened himself to George Washington. He said, “So let us mark this day with remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river.
“The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At the moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words to be read to the people: ‘Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet.’ ”
Newsweek upped the ante by comparing Obama favorably with Abraham Lincoln, saying, “It is the season to compare Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln. Two thin men from rude beginnings (yes, private school in Hawaii must have been a terrible burden for Obama), relatively new to Washington but wise to the world, bring the nation together to face a crisis. Both are superb rhetoricians, both geniuses at stagecraft and timing. Obama, like Lincoln and unlike most modern politicians, even writes his own speeches, or at least drafts the really important ones – by hand, on yellow legal paper – such as his remarkably honest speech on race during the Reverend Wright imbroglio last spring.
In order to create a more Lincolnesque image, Obama even went so far as to emulate Lincoln’s pre-inaugural trip to Washington, traveling by train from Philadelphia to Washington.
Not content with comparisons to Washington and Lincoln, The New York Daily News compared Obama to FDR, saying, “... if one looks at Obama's campaign in a larger historical context, the most apt comparison may be Franklin Roosevelt. At a time when the nation was hungry for real solutions to serious national challenges, FDR understood what too few Democratic presidential contenders have since: At moments of profound discontent, the nation craves not a policymaker in chief, but a leader who can lay out an affirmative and inspiring vision for the country. It's a lesson Obama must remember in the difficult months to come.”
History News Network, published at George Mason University, followed with, “After a year of evoking Lincoln’s words and Kennedy’s charisma, Obama recently has been channeling his inner FDR. He repeated Roosevelt’s words, “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” and his economic advisers have been hinting at an activist First Hundred Days economic program reminiscent of FDR’s first hundred days in office...”
Slate Magazine compared Obama to JFK, saying, “When answering the charge that the Illinois senator lacks the record of achievement befitting a White House aspirant, Obama's backers often stack him next to JFK. Obama is 44, older than JFK was when he ran. Skeptics derided JFK, as they now do Obama, as callow and ill-versed in substantive issues. And yet Obama, similar to JFK, manages to inspire people with sex appeal, cerebral cool, and a message of generational change... For all these surface similarities, however, the most important aspect of Kennedy's campaign mirrored in Obama's may be the way that JFK handled his Catholicism. In the 1960 campaign, Kennedy turned his religion from a liability into an asset. Obama seems to be doing the same thing with his race.”
But then, in the unkindest cut of all, Obama himself has repeatedly embraced Ronald Reagan. During his European trip, Obama attempted to attach himself to the Reagan aura by speaking at the Brandenburg Gate, but the Germans denied him that opportunity. Then, in an interview with the Reno Gazette, he brought criticism from within his own party. He said, “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not, and a way that Bill Clinton did not.” He said, “We want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."
But all of this is mere wishful thinking on the part of Democrats and other Obamaphiles... mere self-aggrandizement. Watching Obama campaign against his Democratic rivals and later against Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, and watching his first pitiful efforts in a job for which he is totally ill-prepared, he bears no resemblance whatsoever to any of his predecessors. Instead, he brings to mind Icarus, the son of Daedalus, in Greek mythology.
According to Greek mythology, Daedalus and his son, Icarus, were imprisoned by King Minos on the island of Crete. As a means of escape, Daedalus made two pairs of wings by attaching feathers to a wooden frame with wax. However, before departing the island, Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the Sun or too close to the sea.
But Icarus became enraptured with his ability to fly and soon forgot his father's warning. Soaring effortlessly through the sky, Icarus flew too high and the heat of the Sun melted the wax of his wings. And as he flapped and flapped his arms, trying frantically to maintain himself in flight, he soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. He fell into the sea and died.
What better metaphor for Barack Obama. His meteoric rise to power and his all-but-certain fall from grace will be every bit as spectacular as Icarus’s flight. Yes, Obama’s political godfather, George Soros, and others, made certain that Obama had enough feathers and enough wax to fly effortlessly through the Democratic primaries and the General Election. However, drunk with power, and thinking of himself as invincible and irresistible, Obama has paid little attention to the lessons of history.
In just a few short weeks the Obama presidency has come to resemble, not the inventive and forward-looking approach to governance that his supporters envisioned, but something far more tragic. His soaring rhetoric and his promise of unspecified “change” were the wax and the feathers that took him to the heights, but now he appears more like Icarus after flying too close to the Sun. His personal charm and his monumental ego... actually believing that he was capable of serving as President of the United States... were the sum and substance of his perceived greatness. But now, as it all begins to melt away, his disappointed followers find that there is simply no “there” there. They are left with nothing more than an empty suit floating on a sea of broken promises. |
