Everyone knows Barack Obama is confident. After all, he occasionally refers to himself in the third person. "Every place is Barack Obama country once Barack Obama's been there," he once said. He often tells voters that he is "imperfect,"
which presupposes that they need reminding. And oh, right--he decided
to run for leader of the free world after serving less than two years
in the U.S. Senate. Most people, I think, expect anyone crazy enough
to want the presidency to regard himself highly. But as "The One"
bedazzles Europe and the Mideast this week, the question that
Republicans want reporters and readers to ask is whether he's
crossing the line into cockiness.
To
that end, the RNC has created a new email alert--complete its own
illustrated banner--called "Audacity Watch." The first message went out
this morning. Its headline: "Senior Obama foreign policy adviser: Obama
is President of the United States." The email then goes on to relay
this exchange from Politico's latest dispatch:
"[Berlin] is not
going to be a political speech," said a senior foreign policy adviser, who spoke
to reporters on background. "When the president of the United
States goes and gives a speech, it is not a
political speech or a political rally."
"But he is not
president of the United
States," a reporter reminded the
adviser.
The
reporter, of course, has a point: Obama is not president of the United
States. But I'm going to bet the candidate is aware of that--even if
his advisers sometimes forget (especially when they're bragging about
big rallies in front of foreign landmarks). Audacity rating: mild.
That's
not say, however, that Obama is audaciousless. The senator's more
interesting remark, actually, came during his Sunday morning interview
with CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Afghanistan (video above). Asked
if "the trip [was] partly aimed at overcoming....
doubts among some Americans that you could lead the country at war as
commander in chief from day one," the Illinois senator delivered a
curious response. "The objective of this trip was to have substantive
discussions with
people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President
Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight
to ten years," he said. The funny thing is not that Obama expects to
get elected to two terms instead of one--not unusual, really--but that
he seems to suggest that his second term (which, by any traditional
measure would end on Jan. 20, 2017) could extend an additional sixteen
months until July 2018, which would require changing either the Constitution
or the laws of space and time. If that's not audacious, I don't know
what is.
Still, Obama did make sure to remind the first reporter he saw after departing Friday from Chicago that "we have one president at a time." So at least we're all clear on that.
UPDATE, 4:49 p.m.: More Obama "presidentiality" from the Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown:
Obama aides were reminded by reporters--for the second time today--that he isn't in the White House yet, and therefore they can't invoke
White House rules and traditions.
An unpaid foreign policy adviser (who worked for Clinton) told reporters
that he never in his four years in the White House had go on the
record for a briefing. Several reporters retorted that they weren't in
the White House.
