Maureen Dowd: You Know, That Obama Guy Is Pretty Ungrateful

Oh, come on, Mo, don’t you appreciate the 3-5 emails sent to you which seem so personal, asking for $3? Hey, you had a chance to hobnob with Obama at his 51st birthday party, all for $3! (Interestingly, I still can’t find any news on who actually won, including on Obama’s reelection website. One would think they’d publicize it)

The Ungrateful President

Just so, the president does not think people should expect too much in return for paying $35,800 for an hour of his time, as they did at the Weinstein affair, or in return for other favors.

Obama smashed through all the barriers and dysfunction in his life to become a self-made, self-narrating president. His brash 2008 campaign invented a new blueprint to upend the Democratic establishment. So it’s understandable if Obama, with his Shaker aesthetic, is not inclined to play by the rococo rules of politics. Yet, as the president struggles to stay ahead of Moneybags Romney, his selective insensitivities may be hurting him.

Stories abound of big donors who stopped giving as much or working as hard because Obama never reached out, either with a Clinton-esque warm bath of attention or Romney-esque weekend love fests and Israeli-style jaunts; of celebrities who gave concerts for his campaigns and never received thank-you notes or even his full attention during the performance; of public servants upset because they knocked themselves out at the president’s request and never got a pat on the back; of V.I.P.’s disappointed to get pictures of themselves with the president with the customary signature withheld; of politicians disaffected by the president’s penchant for not letting members of Congress or local pols stand on stage with him when he’s speaking in their state (they often watch from the audience and sometimes have to lobby just to get a shout-out); of power brokers, local and national, who felt that the president insulted them by never seeking their advice or asking them to come to the White House or ride along in the limo for a schmooze.

Care and feeding has been outsourced to Joe Biden, who loves it, but it doesn’t build the same kind of loyalty as when the president does it.

“He comes from the neediest profession of all, except for acting, but he is not needy and he doesn’t fully understand the neediness of others; it’s an abstraction to him,” says Jonathan Alter, who wrote “The Promise” about Obama’s first year in office and is working on a sequel. “He’s not an ungracious person, but he can be guilty of ingratitude. It’s not a politically smart way for him to operate.”

Doesn’t Mo know that people are supposed to be there for Obama, not the other way around? He is, after all, The One, the Lightworker. He doesn’t have time for niceties. Everyone should just bask in the knowledge that Obama “wants to be a policy maker, not a glad-handing pol.” He just needs to unwind from reading from a teleprompter and play some golf. Maybe get around to visiting the 58th state. It’s not about you, Mo, it’s all about Obama.

Is anyone markedly flabbergasted by Mo’s description of Obama? What you have is the most narcissistic president of all time, and, face it, politicians tend to be pretty self-loving in the first place. Remember, this is the same guy who dropped his name into most Presidential biographies.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

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