A must Steyn

Once again, Mark Steyn puts his finger directly on the pulse of Obama's fatal character flaw.......

This Mr. Obama did brilliantly. A man who speaks fewer languages than the famously moronic George W. Bush, he has nevertheless grasped the essential lingo of the European transnationalist: Continental leaders strike attitudes rather than effect action - which is, frankly, beneath them. One thinks of the insistence a few years ago by Louis Michel, the then-Belgian foreign minister, that the so-called European Rapid Reaction Force "must declare itself operational without such a declaration being based on any true capability." As even The Washington Post drily remarked, "Apparently in Europe this works."

Apparently. Thus, Barack Obama: He declared himself operational without such a declaration being based on any true capability. But, if it works for the EU, why not America? Like many of his background here and there, Mr. Obama is engaged mostly by abstractions and generalities. Indeed, he is the very model of a modern major generalist. He has grand plans for "the environment" - all of it, wherever it may be. Why should the great eco-Gulliver be ensnared by some Lilliputian oil spill lapping 'round his boots? He flew into Cairo to give one of the most historically historic speeches in history to the Muslim world. Why should such a colossus lower his visionary gaze to contemplate some no-account nickel-'n'-dime racket like the Iranian nuclear program? With one stroke of his pen, he has transformed the health care of 300 million people. But I suppose if there's some killer flu epidemic or a cholera outbreak in New Mexico, you losers will be whining at Mr. Obama to do something about that, too.

In recent months, a lot of Americans have said to me that they had no idea the new president would feel so "weird." But, in fact, he's not weird. True, he's not, even in Democrat terms, a political figure - as, say, Bill Clinton or Joe Biden are. Instead, he's the product of the broader culture: There are millions of people like Mr. Obama, the eternal students of a vast lethargic, transnational campus for whom global compassion and the multicultural pose are merely the modish gloss on a cult of radical, grandiose narcissism. As someone once said, "We are the ones we've been waiting for." When you've spent that long waiting in line for yourself, it's bound to be a disappointment.

Read the whole piece.........