Hubris: Extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one’s own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.
– Wikipedia

It is a cliché to say that if you looked up “hubris” in the dictionary, you would find a picture of Barack Obama. But the reason a statement becomes a cliché is that it is used frequently, and the reason it is used frequently is that it contains a nugget of truth.
This is a column, not a book, so there is insufficient space to discuss all the manifestations of hubris that characterize the Obama presidency. Let us concentrate on three.
Eric Holder.
The attorney general declared that he has no intention of resigning, because he has more things he intends to do. What those things are we were left to imagine. But the best way to predict future behavior is to look at past behavior.
Forget about Holder’s peripheral role in the whitewash of the Randy Weaver affair, in which federal agents shot to death Weaver’s dog, son, and wife (in that order) over a trumped-up weapons charge. Forget about Holder’s more central role in the Waco massacre, in which 84 persons – including 26 minors who were by definition innocent hostages – were gassed and burned to death by federal agents over a trumped-up weapons charge. Fast forward to Holder’s key role in the Fast and Furious affair, in which U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was shot to death by guns supplied by our government to Mexican drug cartels to justify a trumped-up weapons charge. Sense a pattern here?
Then we have Holder’s testimony to Congress that he had no role in quashing the prosecution of the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation. And we have Holder’s testimony to Congress that he had no role in the Fast and Furious debacle. And we have Holder’s testimony to Congress that he had no role in the surveillance of reporters, including Fox News chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, as well as AP reporters. Sense a pattern here, too?
As a graduate of Columbia University and Columbia Law School, Holder is a striking example of the fact that an elite education guarantees neither competence nor a moral compass. Whether his boss, the president, is an even more striking example I leave to you. But as you can see, the competition for the hubris award is rather stiff.
Susan Rice.
Dr. Rice served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. President Obama was believed to be considering her for secretary of State to succeed Hillary Clinton. However, when this became impractical, Obama appointed John Kerry, an equally eloquent spokesperson for America’s faults, real or imagined. Instead, Rice was appointed national security advisor, which does not require Senate confirmation.
The reason Rice would never be confirmed by the Senate as secretary of State is that, after the Benghazi disaster, Rice went on five Sunday talk shows and repeatedly blamed the attack not on extremist Muslim terrorism, but on a “spontaneous” demonstration against a YouTube video that virtually no one had seen. Our mission in Benghazi, legally American territory, was overrun and burned, and four Americans were killed – including Ambassador Chris Stevens, an assistant, and two former SEALs.
But according to Rice, some Libyans just happened to be walking around carrying machine guns, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades, and they just happened to hear about the video – and attacked our mission “spontaneously.”
Ambassador Stevens’ number-two man in Libya, Gregory Hicks, testified that he was “stunned and embarrassed” by Rice’s talk-show performances, because he and his people in Libya knew it was a terrorist attack “from the get-go.”
Question: Did Rice actually believe this fairy tale – in which case she is a fool? Or did she know the story was untrue, but told it anyhow to serve the president’s political agenda that terrorism is no longer a problem – in which case she is a liar? In either case, she is not remotely qualified to be National Security Advisor to the president.
Note that Rice attended Stanford University and Oxford University, where she received a PhD. The competition for the hubris award is stiff indeed.
Samantha Power.
To fill Susan Rice’s place as our U.N. ambassador, President Obama nominated Samantha Power. I can do no better than to quote Fox News:

Yet once Power finally achieved a position of actual authority, she continuously failed to act or even forcefully speak out in favor of U.S. government action.

She espoused little to no support of Iran’s 2009 Green Revolution when Iranian students and others took to the streets to protest the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

She sat silent during the crucial moments when the Syrian crisis first started and has remained absent for two years as 80,000 plus Syrians have been killed.

And despite years of fierce rhetoric against Bush for inaction in Darfur, she has become mute as genocide continues to ravage the region.

An academic with zero real-world diplomatic experience, her biting words ring hollow from inside the White House.

That is, while Bush was president, Power harshly criticized our government for inaction on human rights violations by other nations. But since Obama took office and she was picked to head the White House Office of Human Rights, Power maintained an obedient silence. She was an Obama campaign aide in the 2008 election, and she continues that function, regardless of her title.
Power is married to Cass Sunstein, Obama’s former regulatory “czar.” Sunstein is known for leftist views, including the notion that government agents should infiltrate right-wing groups to discredit them. Such agents provocateurs were first used by the real Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, hardly a liberal role model, and they were employed by dictators in the 20th century. It is difficult to see how this totalitarian notion is compatible with his wife’s passion for human rights.
Power is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School. Clearly, the competition for the hubris award is frightfully stiff. But apparently the supply of over-educated, under-qualified, highly opinionated “experts” is large enough to supply the demand until Obama’s term expires. We may be running out of money, but our supply of members of the self-anointed elite seems to be unending.
But despite the tough competition, the winner of the hubris award is clearly Barack Obama.
● Consider his astonishing self-assurance.
● Consider his habit of looking upwards, as if communing with the Almighty is the only way he can speak to an equal.
● Consider his way of talking down to audiences, as if he is lecturing a class of dull students.
● Consider all the arrogant, self-important snobs he has appointed to help him achieve his agenda. I am reminded of the definition of an expert: One who is often wrong but rarely in doubt.
It is as if Obama believes he is conducting an academic seminar rather than steering the ship of state. In an academic seminar, fanciful, unrealistic theories bring praise for innovative thought. But in the real world, fanciful, unrealistic theories can be terribly dangerous.
So here we are, going full-speed-ahead into the moonless night. But with the “experts” in charge, what could possibly go wrong?

 

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