What do you make of this characteristic pose? I can't see it as anything other than Messianic [not in Jesus' sense] and superior. It's the pose of a man who considers himself "The Great Man of the Century," "The Deliverer." Am I wrong?
Jay Nordlinger seems to agree:
Obama looks arrogant, whether he’s arrogant or not. I don’t think he can help it: It’s the upturned chin. When actors want to preen and so on: They turn that chin upward. Yikes.
Jonah Goldberg interprets the upward chin this way:
He puts his chin up like that to show that he is peering off into the middle distance of history. He sees farther than the rest of us, so we should follow him to the sunny uplands of History.
Nordlinger adds to what he had written earlier:
Enough readers to notice — say, 15 — have written (all independently, of course), “Reminds me of photos or newsreels of Mussolini.” Hmmm. Now, this is just a stylistic point, mind you. I’m sure NRO readers mean nothing nefarious by it. Compared with Il Duce, our president is surely Il Dolce.
Me: The pose strikes me as creepy. Presidents are not monarchs, nor are they demigods. The scary worldwide adulation (and near hysteria) that attended this man's election to the presidency (fueled by media puffery), has simmered down for now, but should it be rekindled, I shudder for America and the world.
See my previous post highlighting an important article by Fouad Ajami to which I appended a personal comment on "original sin." See also my earlier posts on "Obama as Messiah."