It all has to do with Obama’s paucity of manners and abundance of ego.

A few weeks ago, Barack Obama took full credit for the fall in gas prices over the last 6 months.  To paraphrase Barack Obama: “He didn’t build that.”  Instead, the oilmen who pioneered fracking technology unleashed a torrent of natural gas and oil under private lands in America.  Obama has all but shut down exploration and development on the vast swath of America held by the federal government.  Obama trumpeted their success as his own during his speech at a community college in Indiana (video):

In a speech at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, Indiana on Friday President Obama took credit for the lower price of gas at the pump. However, he warned "at some point they are going to go back up."

"We're as free of foreign oil as we've been in 30 years," Obama said. "We've doubled the amount of clean energy that we're producing. A lot of families are saving a lot of money at the gas pump, which is putting some smiles on folks' faces."

"You're welcome," Obama said to tepid applause.

The “You’re Welcome” was offensive on several grounds.  It was another gratuitous stealing of credit – something Obama has done throughout his career, while blaming others when problems arise.  All very ungracious and un-presidential.  But, as Victor Davis Hanson has noted, Barack Obama is the Snarker-in-Chief.  The man has a real deficit when it comes to manners.

So I read with some pleasure a New York Times Magazine column that focused on the sheer obnoxiousness of people who say “You’re Welcome” when no one has thanked them.  In the New York Times’ view, it is a prime example of a “gloat.”

Amanda Hess writes:

“You’re welcome” took up its new function as an expression of rudeness at just the moment when the phrase lost its usefulness as a nicety.

(snip)

Perhaps it was inevitable that “you’re welcome” would break free from the realm of etiquette to assert itself as a stand-alone expression. These days, it has become commonplace to say “you’re welcome” apropos of nothing, signaling, roughly: “No need to thank me. I already know how great I am.”

Sadly, Hess (who cited others using this phrase in a rude, snarky way) did not use Barack Obama as an example.  I was surprised, but then I realized, after all, I was reading the New York Times.

Image by Otto Veblin