“I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.”
– Sen. Barack Obama, 2004
Obama: I Can Do Every Job Better Than Those I Hire to Do It
It appears one of the great challenges that President Obama has had to overcome in office is that no one around him is as good at his job as he is.
From Jodi Kantor’s The Obamas, page 66:
Obama had always had a high estimation of his ability to cast and run his operation. When David Plouffe, his campaign manager, first interviewed for a job with him in 2006, the senator gave him a warning: “I think I could probably do every job on the campaign better than the people I’ll hire to do it,” he said. “It’s hard to give up control when that’s all I’ve known.” Obama said nearly the same thing to Patrick Gaspard, whom he hired to be the campaign’s political director. “I think I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Obama told him. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.”
This is not some long-ago sentiment, or momentary lapse into egoism. Michelle Obama declared at a Democrat party fundraiser in California last June:
“He reads every word, every memo, so he is better prepared than the people briefing him,” she said. “This man doesn’t take a day off.”
Whether you call it ego, conceit or self-confidence, nobody runs for POTUS without quite a bit of it. But Obama is the definition of hubis – “overweening pride.” Get him away from a teleprompter and he’s a stuttering clusterf**k. Put him in a debate with Hillary and he copies off her paper.
As for his political skills, he only won his first campaign by getting all the competition thrown off the ballot. He got his clock cleaned by Bobby Rush in 1992. Then he hired David Axelrod, but even then he only won in 2004 because his opponents had dirty laundry. Hillary spent less money than he did and got more votes, and McPalin would have won had it not been for the financial meltdown.
Obama’s a jerk of all trades.
BTW – How many championships has LeBron won?
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