You know I heart Krauthammer.

And, "narcissist" is about the nicest word I could think of to end your final sentence.

Obama thinks that if he ingratiates the rogue leaders of the world they will all set aside their hostility against America and become friends. Then he can shine and triumphantly prove to the world that he is a messiah, with wisdom far surpassing other leaders and thus be hailed as the ONE who ended the wars and established the Kingdom on Earth.

Of course any sane person knows that these are juvenile thinkings. Since the masses of people are simply naïve, they were swayed by such demagogy and thought he really can perform miracles. Narcissists are very confident of themselves. That is the source of their charisma. The problem is that their confidence stems from their inability to separate facts from fantasy.

For Obama - and for his devotees - image is reality. Image overcomes reality:

He [Obama] is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.

- Ezra Klein

Flesh is physical. But words don't need real world referents. We Great Leaders can and do say anything we want. When you starve, we celebrate a harvest.When you lose battles, we proclaim victory. And millions of you will support us no matter what. Millions will vote for us. Willingly. We love democracy because it is dumb-ocracy. We tell the masses what they want to hear and they buy it. They believe in "the triumph of word over flesh" - in magic.

Don't be fooled by iPods. Men are still cavemen, ready to obey anyone who acts like a chief, or in modern parlance, 'acts presidential'. Obama is an actor.

Actors can be narcissists. The public reinforces their 'greatness' by praising them instead of the director, the screenwriter, and all the many others who make our 'entertainment'. These 'mere' nonactors are the equivalent of the faceless capitalists who power the nation that Obama rules. Who cares about them when there is the One who makes us feel so good? In Klein's words,

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence and your role in it.

Can McCain do that? No wonder he lost.

We live in an Oprah world where feelings matter more than facts. We Great Leaders manipulate both. As long as you're on an emotional high, you won't think. You won't notice that Eastasia is our ally/enemy/whatever today even though it wasn't yesterday. You'll conveniently forget about Rev. Wright, about Ayers, about all those inconvenient truths even Al Gore won't mention.

But you haven't forgotten, have you? You still remember. Remember this prediction:

The narcissistic leader prefers the sparkle and glamour of well-orchestrated illusions to the tedium and method of real accomplishments, His reign is all smoke and mirrors, devoid of substances, consisting of mere appearances and mass delusions. In the aftermath of his regime - the narcissistic leader having died, been deposed, or voted out of office - it all unravels.

- Sam Vaknin

Why on earth did Sarkozy go along with this? He's not one of Obama's employees.

In 1936, when the Germans moved troops into the Rhineland in defiance of treaty, French officials debated a military response. One of the arguments made *against* was that the United States wouldn't like it.

Allies should be treated with respect, but there are times a country's gotta do what it's gotta do.