Matthew Continetti offers National Review Online readers an interesting take on President Obama’s response to the 2016 presidential election results.
For example — and here is the line that confuses me — “he sent a message to Mr. [Ben] Rhodes saying, ‘There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.’”
Say what? How does a dimly remembered Carl Sagan quote relate to 2016? Was Obama speaking in code? Was this an example of him taking the “long view” — implying that lol nothing matters because we are all cosmic dust adrift in the void? Was he suggesting the planet might be saved from Trump by an alien invasion? It sounds like the message you’d find inside an especially pretentious fortune cookie.
Obama’s words once again revealed his colossal lack of self-awareness. The passages … reinforce the widespread impression of our 44th president as an aloof, smug, vainglorious chief executive totally divorced from political reality. The shock, disgust, confusion, and horror with which Obama and his team greeted the election results exemplified the very attitudes toward democratic procedure and populist conservatism that fueled Trump’s rise. The only lesson Barack Obama drew from the election was confirmation of his own moral superiority. …
… Imagine carrying the burden of Barack Obama, of being too enlightened, sophisticated, mature for his time. In his conceit that historical progress is assured and irreversible, and that challenges to such progress are reducible to irrational prejudice, Obama is a paradigmatic liberal. Yet America’s frequent elections, tendency to rotate offices, decentralization of power, avenues for the expression of popular discontent, and multiple veto points continually frustrated his desires.
