Obama's bootlicking NEA chairman

By Rick Moran

Do you wonder why Obama doesn't take criticism well or seem not to be aware of anyone who disagrees with him?

Ed Lasky:

I have speculated for a while that the reason Obama seems so tone deaf to public outrage is that he is surrounded by an entourage of people who refuse to express their concerns that he may be overstepping or making a mistake. Where are the checks and balances when you are surrounded by people who are enthralled with you and covered by a infatuated media? This was Obama's choice to head the National Endowment of Arts and dispense hundreds of millions of our taxpayer dollars? America does not need an ego-driven Presdient who is considered-by himself, as well as others, to be infallible.

Scott Johnson of Powerline posts on this speech by Rocco Landesmann, NEA chairman, that is so syrupy sweet with Obama worship it activates the gag reflex:

This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.

Johnson:

Landesman compares Obama favorably with Julius Caesar as "a powerful writer." Landesman is not referring to Obama's skills as a writer, but rather to the power he holds by virtue of his office. Some might think that the literary comparison sells Obama short. Caesar was something of a self-promoter and propagandist in his writing.
Yet Landesman knows Obama is like Caesar, somehow -- a friend asks, is it in the transformation of a republic into an empire with a divine ruler? Perhaps if Landesman had his wits about him, he would note instead that Obama is the most powerful speaker since the other JC.

Well, so what if Landesman is a bootlicker? Landesman is also an idiot. Lincoln never wrote a book, although I believe he did compile the texts of his 1858 debates with Douglas for publication in book form. And Landesman misses a few presidential authors since Theodore Roosevelt.

Woodrow Wilson wrote several influential books as a Princeton professor. Herbert Hoover wrote books including, I am reliably advised, a classic book on fishing. Richard Nixon wrote books before and after his presidency. And even Bill Clinton wrote his apologia pro vita sua.

One would think if you are going to play the bootlicker, at least you could get historical analogies correct.

Unmentioned in Landsemann's sycophancy is any word about the president who was actually an artist by trade; Ronald Reagan. And Reagan was not just powerful, he used the power of his office to win a multi-generational war, revive a moribund economy, and instill a new confidence in America by her citizens.

What's Obama done?

Thomas Lifson adds:

I suspect that Obama would prefer Landesmann keep his mouth shut when it comes to claims that Obama actually wrote his own books. Given the accumulating weight of evidence that Obama's first book was actually ghost-written by his neighbor Bill Ayers (latest chapter here), the less attention devoted to the subject, the better. Of course, Obama's narcissism may be so pathological that this practical consideration is of no moment.