WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama wants to speak at the Brandenburg Gate. He figures it would be a nice backdrop. The supporting cast -- a cheering audience and a few fainting frauleins -- would be a picturesque way to bolster his foreign policy credentials.

What Obama does not seem to understand is that the Brandenburg Gate is something you earn. President Reagan earned the right to speak there because his relentless pressure had brought the Soviet empire to its knees and he was demanding its final "tear down this wall" liquidation. When President Kennedy visited the Brandenburg Gate on the day of his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech, he was representing a country that was prepared to go to the brink of nuclear war to defend West Berlin.

Who is Obama representing? And what exactly has he done in his lifetime to merit appropriating the Brandenburg Gate as a campaign prop? What was his role in the fight against communism, the liberation of Eastern Europe, the creation of what George Bush 41 -- who presided over the fall of the Berlin Wall but modestly declined to go there for a victory lap -- called "a Europe whole and free"?

Does Obama not see the incongruity? It's as if a German pol took a campaign trip to America and demanded the Statue of Liberty as a venue for a campaign speech. (The Germans have now gently nudged Obama into looking at other venues.)

Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history -- "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" -- when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow." As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.

Obama may think he's King Canute, but the good king ordered the tides to halt precisely to refute sycophantic aides who suggested that he had such power. Obama has no such modesty.

After all, in the words of his own slogan, "we are the ones we've been waiting for," which, translating the royal "we," means: "I am the one we've been waiting for." Amazingly, he had a quasi-presidential seal with its own Latin inscription affixed to his podium, until general ridicule -- it was pointed out that he was not yet president -- induced him to take it down

He lectures us that instead of worrying about immigrants learning English, "you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish" -- a language Obama does not speak. He further admonishes us on how "embarrassing" it is that Europeans are multilingual but "we go over to Europe, and all we can say is, 'merci beaucoup.'" Obama speaks no French.

His fluent English does, however, feature many such admonitions, instructions and improvements. His wife assures us that President Obama will be a stern taskmaster: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism ... that you come out of your isolation. ... Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

That's a Wrap

Sunday, November 30, 2003

By Tony Snow

Well, folks: This is it. The final segment of my final show as host of Fox News Sunday.

It's tempting at such a time to pack vast wisdom into a short homily, but that has been accomplished successfully only by God on Mt. Sinai and Lincoln at Gettysburg, and I'm neither. So I'll stick with a few simple observations.

First, politics is a great and wonderful avocation, especially in its American incarnation, but it's also a very small slice of life. In Washington, a town where the urgent regularly overwhelms the important, we tend to forget this -- but most of you at home don't.

In the same vein, if you can't laugh at politics, you have either a heart or head of stone. This is the profession where high-minded ideals regularly encounter the exploding cigar of human nature: What a delightful and achingly human business -- filled at once with great ideals and belly-crawling acts of avarice, deceit and betrayal!

And finally, nothing matters than loving those around you. When I worked for the first President Bush, he often said the most important thing for him was not taxes, or foreign policy, or re-election. It was family. He had it right -- and we'll all do better if we take care never to let our passions overwhelm either our compassion or our common sense.

And now some final pieces of housekeeping: Chris Wallace will assume the helm at this show next week. He's a great guy and I'm confident he'll take Fox News Sunday where it belongs -- No. 1 in the ratings.

Meanwhile, I'm headed to Fox News Radio, where I'll host a three-hour daily program starting, oh, about a month from now. I've got a huge favor to ask of all of you. Call your local talk radio station or stations, and ask the people who run the place to take my show. Tell them you want to hear me on the air. I guarantee, you won't be disappointed. If you want to keep track of the program's progress, we soon will start posting information about the show on the Foxnews.com web site.

And finally, thanks to all my friends here at FNS, the staff, the crew, the guests and the panel. You have given me immeasurable joy over the last seven and a half years, and I thank one and all from the bottom of my heart.

Tony Snow’s “Parting Thoughts” archive:

After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan.

143 days -- I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that.

 

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Michael Ramirez follows up on the recent "Seal of Obama" flap:

 

 

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Barack Obama has a new "friend" to speak on his behalf: Rehired Gen. Wesley Clark.

 

 

(Note: One cannot be considered "retired" if he has indeed been "rehired" by yet another arrogant presidential aspirant--first by John "Reporting for Duty" Kerry in 2004 when Clark gushed about how Kerry's military experience cultivating suspect Purple Hearts in Vietnam prepared him to lead our country, and then by Hillary Clinton during this year's primaries. Clark's standing as the "Democrats' Favorite General" is safe. )

 

Yesterday, the General appeared on Face the Nation to extoll the leadership virtues of Sen. Obama: character, communication skills, and judgment. Clark was right not to mention the junior senator's experience, or utter lack of it. However, Clark may have overstepped his friendship by denigrating John McCain's military service by stating that flying a fighter jet and getting shot down does not qualify one for the presidency. Ouch!

 

Today, Obama's campaign spokesman had to assert that Rehired Gen. Clark's opinions were his alone, and not Barack Obama's. Therefore, yesterday's performance was a study in Clark's character, communication skills, and judgment and NOT Barack Obama's, correct? Good thing we cleared that up!

 

When is the press conference announcing that Obama is distancing himself from the remarks of Clark? Just another opportunity to demonstrate your leadership virtues of character, communication skills, and judgment while placing yet another former friend/mentor/acquaintance/grandmother behind you as you move forward in your Quest for the White House.

 

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Finally, Michael Ramirez captures the essence of Obama's public financing decision:

 

 

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In summary, 143 days in the Senate, a Seal of Arrogance, the support of a Rehired General, and a major turnabout in campaign financing are the latest chapters in the "Presidential Saga of Barack Obama."

 

(Late Note: At Independence, MO, today, Barack Obama stated that "I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign. And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine." But, he will sit idly by--or let his campaign spokesman speak for him--while others denigrate John McCain's military service.)

 

But the question still lingers: Is this guy serious or what?

 

 

Dear Reader... Last week's SCOTUS ruling allowing "alleged" foreign enemy combatants the right to stand alongside citizens of this country in a court of law left me speechless. I simply do not understand how a sworn enemy of the United States--an evil person dedicated to subjugating and destroying our infrastructure, our culture, our religious freedoms, our political and economic philosophies, and willing to cut off our heads to achieve it, if necessary--can qualify for this unalienable Right. Thomas Jefferson stated that the "Constitution... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please." In my opinion, Justice Kennedy and Friends just placed a wick in their wax creation and set it on fire. Therefore, I share with you the opinions of Eric Allie, The Wall Street Journal, and Michael Ramirez...

 

 

President Kennedy
June 13, 2008 / Wall Street Journal / Page A14

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy isn't known for his judicial modesty. But for sheer willfulness, yesterday's 5-4 majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush may earn him a historic place among the likes of Harry Blackmun. In a stroke, he and four other unelected Justices have declared their war-making supremacy over both Congress and the White House.

Boumediene concerns habeas corpus – the right of Americans to challenge detention by the government. Justice Kennedy has now extended that right to non-American enemy combatants captured abroad trying to kill Americans in the war on terror. We can say with confident horror that more Americans are likely to die as a result.

An Algerian native, Lakhdar Boumediene was detained by U.S. troops in Bosnia in January 2002 and is currently held at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. military heard the case for Boumediene's detention in 2004, and in the years since he has never appealed the finding that he is an enemy combatant, although he could under federal law. Instead, his lawyers asserted his "right" – as an alien held outside the United States – to a habeas hearing before a U.S. federal judge.

Justice Kennedy's opinion is remarkable in its sweeping disregard for the decisions of both political branches. In a pair of 2006 laws – the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act – Congress and the President had worked out painstaking and good-faith rules for handling enemy combatants during wartime. These rules came in response to previous Supreme Court decisions demanding such procedural care, and they are the most extensive ever granted to prisoners of war.

Yet as Justice Antonin Scalia notes in dissent, "Turns out" the same Justices "were just kidding." Mr. Kennedy now deems those efforts inadequate, based on only the most cursory analysis. As Chief Justice John Roberts makes clear in his dissent, the majority seems to dislike these procedures merely because a judge did not sanctify them. In their place, Justice Kennedy decrees that district court judges should derive their own ad hoc standards for judging habeas petitions. Make it up as you go!

Justice Kennedy declines even to consider what those standards should be, or how they would protect national security over classified information or the sources and methods that led to the detentions. Eventually, as the lower courts work their will amid endless litigation, perhaps President Kennedy will vouchsafe more details in some future case. In the meantime, the likelihood grows that our soldiers will prematurely release combatants who will kill more Americans.

To reach yesterday's decision, Justice Kennedy also had to dissemble about Justice Robert Jackson's famous 1950 decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. In that case, German nationals had been tried and convicted by military commissions for providing aid to the Japanese after Germany's surrender in World War II. Justice Jackson ruled that non-Americans held in a prison in the American occupation zone in Germany did not warrant habeas corpus. But rather than overrule Eisentrager, Mr. Kennedy misinterprets it to pretend that it was based on mere "procedural" concerns. This is plainly dishonest.

By the logic of Boumediene, members of al Qaeda will now be able to challenge their status in court in a way that uniformed military officers of a legitimate army cannot. And Justice Scalia points out that this was not a right afforded even to the 400,000 prisoners of war detained on American soil during World War II. It is difficult to understand why any terrorist held anywhere in the world – whether at Camp Cropper in Iraq or Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan – won't now have the same right to have their appeals heard in an American court.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution contains the so-called Suspension Clause, which says: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Justice Kennedy makes much of the fact that we are not currently under "invasion or rebellion." But he ignores that these exceptions don't include war abroad because the Framers never contemplated that a non-citizen, captured overseas and held outside the U.S., could claim the same right.

Justice Kennedy's opinion is full of self-applause about his defense of the "great Writ," and no doubt it will be widely praised as a triumph for civil liberties. But we hope it is not a tragedy for civil liberties in the long run. If there is another attack on U.S. soil – perhaps one enabled by a terrorist released under the Kennedy rules – the public demand for security will trample the Constitutional delicacies of Boumediene. Just last month, a former Gitmo detainee killed a group of Iraqi soldiers when he blew himself up in Mosul. And he was someone the military thought it was safe to release.

“I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith, in the capacity of the American people, because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick, and good jobs for the jobless. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal. This was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation, and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment, this was the time when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves.”

--Barack Obama, speech at St. Paul, MN, on Tuesday, 3 June 2008

The following are abridged comments from Mark Steyn, taken from The Hugh Hewitt Show on Friday, 6 June 2008 (full transcript). At the time, Steyn was on trial in Canada at the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal for “hate crimes” against Islam stemming from his bestselling book, America Alone. Here are his thoughts on the phenomenon known as Barack Obama:

“No, I think they decided a long time ago they were in love with him. And despite all the evidence from Pennsylvania and Kentucky and a lot of other places, the Democratic Party voters were not in love with this guy. They persisted in these sort of Soviet-style magazine covers with the uptilted head, and looking into the sunlit uplands. And I think that will continue.”