100 Days of Reckless Photo-Op Hubris

Come on, who`s surprised? The

White House-engineered photo-op of low-flying Air
Force aircraft that
caused terror in New York City this week epitomizes
the Age of Obama. What better way to mark 100 days in
office than with an appalling exercise in pointless
taxpayer-funded stagecraft?

The superficiality, the
unseriousness, the hubris, the obliviousness to
post-9/11 realities: They were trademarks of the Obama
campaign, and they are the tattoos on his governance.

He never leaves home without his
teleprompter. All the Obama world`s a stage. Or a world
ready to be staged.

So is it any wonder he would staff
his White House military office with a clueless paper
pusher who saw nothing wrong with spending inordinate
government resources—and re-creating 9/11 havoc—to
update Air Force One publicity shots? And who planned,
believe it or not, to do the same in Washington, D.C.,
next month, where the 9/11 jihadists murdered 53
passengers and 6 crewmembers on board American Airlines
Flight 77, and 125 military and civilian personnel
inside the Pentagon?

All for some publicity shots.

No one should be shocked. Remember:
Barack Obama is the frivolous man who concocted his own
presidential-looking Great Seal before he was elected.
An ego big enough to publicly display a ridiculous


"Vero Possumus" ("Yes,
we can" in Latin) motto and a regal eagle with the
Obama campaign logo emblazoned on its chest is an ego
capable of far more reckless things. Obama orchestrated
a grand photo-op in Berlin, Germany, to

declare his world citizenship at the

Siegessäule—the
Victory Column—a soaring monument of arrogance
championed by Adolf Hitler and Third Reich architect
Albert Speer. He manufactured his own Open Temple of The
One in Denver for the Democratic National Convention
last summer, replete with
fake Greek columns.

Since taking office, Obama has
remained in perpetual campaign mode, idling in 9/10
gear. The photo album has filled up quickly with
megalomaniacal moments. When his massive pork-filled
stimulus package was in trouble, he ran to Ft. Myers,
Fla., for a carefully
choreographed revival meeting with his most ardent
supporters. "It is such a blessing to see you. Oh! Gracious God, thank you so much!"
one young booster

exclaimed.

The president`s famous embrace with
another questioner—homeless woman

Henrietta Hughes, a

perpetually unemployed drifter looking for a
handout—turned up on the White House online
retrospective of the stimulus bill victory. (Missing:
The photos of hundreds of thousands of Americans who
took to the streets in Tea Party protests to oppose this
massive act of generational theft and expansion of the
entitlement state.)

Another Kodak moment from the
stimulus campaign exposed Obama`s hype of the spending
boondoggle`s effects. Using a

Caterpillar plant and workers as a backdrop, Obama
grandly promised that if the stimulus passed,
Caterpillar would rehire laid-off workers. It made
front-page headlines. After the photo-op:

Caterpillar`s own CEO refuted the bogus promise and
last week posted its first quarterly net loss in 16
years. After the signing, it finally dawned on pliant
media outlets that the

stimulus money was stupendously wasteful, and the
job creation estimates, bogus. No pictures of those
epiphanies.

Obama`s photo-ops abroad have been
more unsettling:

Bowing and scraping before Saudi King Abdullah,
trashing America as
"arrogant"
(talk about a pot and kettle moment) in front of adoring
French and German students,

chumming it up with Venezuelan thug-in-chief Hugo
Chavez. These are the defining images of a stunt(ed)
presidency blind to our enemies and in a perpetual state
of (re)pose.

Obama appointed Leon Panetta, a
chief of intelligence with no intelligence experience.
He gave us Hillary Clinton, a secretary of state who

cackled about the Somali pirate hijacking and
laughed off serious questions about the effectiveness of
enhanced interrogation techniques. He installed

Rosa Brooks, a radical George Soros-trained
ideologue, as a top Pentagon adviser. He came close to
embracing

Charles Freeman as top U.S. intelligence analyst—a
jihadi-sympathizing conspiracist who blamed America for
9/11.

And he appointed Janet Napolitano,
the homeland security secretary who can`t get her facts
straight about the 9/11 terrorists, pooh-poohed our
immigration laws,
disseminated a hit job on conservatives and veterans as
right-wing extremist threats, and redefined acts of
terrorism as "man-caused
disasters."

"Man-caused
disaster." That`s a perfect description of the

Scare Force One torture photo-op that took place
this week and an apt summary of the last 100 days. Say
cheese.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Michelle Malkin [email
her] is author of

Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists,
Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores.
Click

here for Peter Brimelow`s review. Click

here for Michelle Malkin`s website.
Michelle Malkin`s latest book is "Unhinged:
Exposing Liberals Gone Wild."