President Obama spoke at the funeral of Shimon Peres, calling him a "dear friend" and, as usual, made the great occassion all about himself.

You have to wonder what the assembled guests thought of a speech that placed Obama on the same historical plane as Ghandi, Lincoln, and Nelson Mandela.

“I could somehow see myself in his story and he could see himself in mine,” Obama said, delivering the final eulogy for Peres Friday morning in Jerusalem, calling the former Israeli prime minister and president in Hebrew “dear friend,” and lingering for a moment with his hand on the coffin as he left the stage. Peres died Wednesday at the age of 93.

As Carrie Hart notes in her report on the funeral, President Obama said some nice things about Peres and Israel.  But then there was his effort to portray himself as a Peres intimate:

"It was so surprising to see the two of us, where we had started, talking together in the White House, meeting here in Israel," he said. "I think both of us understood that we were here only because in some way we reflected the magnificent story of our nations."

I sincerely doubt that Peres thought of himself in any way as Obama's "equal" or that the president occupied the same historical space as Peres.  But Obama sees himself as a world-historical figure like Mandela, Peres, and even Queen Elizabeth despite the leaders that really matter in the world – Netanyahu, Putin, Merkel, Xi – holding him in contempt.

Once a narcissist, always a narcissist.