Barack Obama: Counting chickens before the eggs are even laid

During Sen. Obama’s recent trip abroad, John McCain charged him with hubris, saying the freshman senator from Chicago was acting like he’s already president. Sen. McCain wasn’t the only one who noticed, either; Paul Weyrich concluded that this was one reason the trip didn’t seem to benefit Sen. Obama.

The Obama campaign began referring to the candidate as if he already were president. . . .It might have worked but for the contempt the electorate has for the media. I saw at least half a dozen interviews on cables over the air networks. In every case voters said, “He is behaving as if he were already elected.” Most said, “That isn’t right.”

Now it turns out that there was even more reason for that feeling than we knew, because the media have been trying to sweep it under the rug: while in Afghanistan, Sen. Obama told a CBS correspondent that

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 10 years. [Emphasis mine.]And it’s important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are.

Now, there are two problems with this. One, it shows once again (as did his “57 states” gaffe) that Sen. Obama has a tendency to get sloppy with numbers—which wouldn’t be a big deal except for the fact that the MSM forgive it in him when they would never forgive it in Sen. McCain. Still, it does raise the question (if only half-seriously), “does this ‘Constitutional scholar’ not realize that there is this little thing called the 22nd Amendment that holds a president to only two, four year terms? Um, that would be a grand total of only 8 years, Barack, not 8 to 10.”The more serious problem in my book is that it shows considerable presumption, and equal hubris, on Sen. Obama’s part. Who is he to expect to be elected President? And beyond that, who is he now to expect that after being elected, he’ll be re-elected four years from now? And as the invaluable Beldar put it,

If Barack Obama is this cocky and this sloppy now, when he’s not yet even the official nominee of his party, then just how much more insufferable and how much more reckless will he be if he actually does become president of the world’s only remaining superpower?

The arrogance underlying his statement is staggering; it makes my head hurt just to think about it. I wanted to like and respect this guy, I really did, even though I knew I’d never vote for him—but honestly, the more I see of him, the less I think of him.