It makes some sense for a man who would be commander-in-chief of
the American military to visit America’s war zones, and indeed,
before last week’s trip, the McCain campaign had been taunting
Barack Obama for months about the fact that he hadn’t visited Iraq
in a long time. It makes less sense, in the middle of a campaign,
for a non-incumbent presidential candidate to do a tour of Europe,
as Obama did last week after making stops in Afghanistan and the
Middle East.
John McCain’s trip to South America earlier this month was
almost as odd, but it wasn’t staged with nearly the fanfare of
Obama’s trip. Nor do McCain’s surrogates have to be reminded that
there’s still an election on, as a senior Obama foreign policy
adviser had to be after asserting that “When the president of the
United States goes and gives a speech [overseas], it is not a
political speech or a political rally.”
“But he is not president of the United States,” a reporter
noted.
Maybe not, but he sure acts like he is. Obama has already
ordered his staff to put together his transition team to prepare
for his move into the White House. In advance of his trip to
Germany, he began to plan for a speech at the Brandenburg Gate, the
hallowed ground where John F. Kennedy visited on the day of his
“Ich bin ein Berliner” speech and where Ronald Reagan gave
his “tear down this wall” speech. The speech was moved after
Chancellor Angela Merkel gently nudged the Obama campaign to
consider a venue more appropriate for a non-president.
It’s possible that Obama forgets that he still needs to be
elected because a competitive general election is totally
unfamiliar to him. In Chicago, where the Republican Party barely
exists, the winner of the Democratic primary automatically wins the
general election. During the 2004 race for U.S. Senate, the
Illinois GOP was in full meltdown and failed to field a serious
candidate, settling instead on the buffoonish perennial
election-loser Alan Keyes; Obama easily crushed him.
Indeed, even in primaries Obama has had an amazingly easy time
of it. In his first election to the state senate, he played Chicago
hardball and got all his opponents kicked off the ballot by
challenging their petition signatures. He faced no serious
opposition in his reelection campaigns. In the 2004 Senate primary,
his most formidable opponent, Blair Hull, lost his considerable
lead in the polls when his ex-wife’s allegations of domestic abuse
became public, clearing the path for Obama. Until he ran for
president, Obama’s toughest race was the one he lost, for Bobby
Rush’s seat in the U.S. House.
The marathon Democratic primary race against Hillary Clinton
was, by far, the hardest-earned victory in Obama’s political
career. With that sweet triumph behind him, and a respectable
(though not overwhelming) lead in most polls, it’s not surprising
that Obama and his allies are getting a little cocky. The media and
foreign leaders (Merkel notwithstanding) are
only egging him on. The networks, who cover McCain’s travels as
almost a footnote, sent their anchors to follow Obama around the
world. During Obama’s stop in Jordan, King Abdullah drove him to
the airport, demoting himself from monarch to cab driver in the
face of The Glorious Barack.
All of this breeds hubris, which, as the Greek dramatists taught
us, tends to lead to tragedy. There’s precious little, at the
moment, to indicate that Obama’s hubris will cost him the election.
The real danger is that the fall before which Obama’s pride goeth
will come only after he’s elected, and that we’ll all have to face
the consequences.
