Megalomania is one of those incurable diseases that has
afflicted kings, generals, dictators, and politicians throughout history. Some
historians have recorded that near the end of his young life Alexander the
Great lamented that “there are no more worlds to conquer.” Caesar invaded Gaul
in 58 B.C. to further his political ambitions. Napoleon was so anxious to
become the emperor of France in 1804 that he snatched the crown from the Pope’s
hands and crowned himself. Near the end of World War II, Winston Churchill
tried to convince Joseph Stalin to cease repressing the Soviet Union’s Roman
Catholics. Stalin’s reply was an example of unbridled megalomania – “How many
divisions does the Pope have?
The old idiom, the bigger they are, the harder they fall,
has also proven to be true throughout history. Alexander the Great conquered most
of the known world before he was thirty. He died when he was only thirty-three.
Julius Caesar was assassinated on the ides of March in 44 B.C., six years after
his conquest of Gaul. A bit too much Gaul, perhaps? Napoleon invaded Russia in
1812 with an army of half a million men. By the time 1813 rolled around, 22,000
French survivors of the campaign limped back home in defeat, done in by the
Russian army and what some historians have called “General Winter.” Stalin
didn’t live to see how many divisions the Pope had, but the world did. In June,
1987, Pope John Paul, a son of Poland, celebrated mass in the city of Gdansk
with its citizens and a small band of steel workers who had bravely defied
communist tyranny. Over a million people, or about fifty divisions, attended.
The movement for freedom grew from there. In 1989, the communists left Poland,
defeated by the fasting, prayer, faith, courage, and resolve of the Polish
people.
Megalomania seems to be a historical constant. It’s in the
air right now and it’s contagious. Its focal point seems to be Syria, but when
the layers are pulled away the current world situation boils down to a contest
of two competing wills and visions. To the east, Vladimir Putin has set his
sights on a new and vigorous Russia. In a 2012 address to the Russian people,
he unveiled a vision of geopolitical relevance that would once again place
Russia in a prominent place on the world stage. He said, “We must not only preserve our
geopolitical relevance, we must also increase it.” What did Mr. Putin mean by
geopolitical relevance? He put it this way. “Geopolitical relevance means the ability to build different relations with
different centers of power in the multipolar world, offering them what they
need.”
This clearly
puts him at odds with the west and Barack Obama, who also has a grand
vision and what appears to be supreme confidence in his ability to make it happen.
It’s a vision of a unipolar world with him as its unelected President. He’s
made it clear wherever he’s been. In June, 2008 he told adoring throngs in
Berlin, “This is the “moment when we
must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it….” “This is the moment
when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons…” “This is the
moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own
tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday…” This is the moment when we must
build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more
equitably…” “This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in
the Middle East…” “This is the moment when we must come together to save this
planet…” People of Berlin - people of the world - this is our moment. This is
our time.” When he accepted the Democratic Party’s Presidential
nomination later that year the theme repeated itself - “This was the moment when we began to provide care for the
sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the
oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we
ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best
hope on Earth. This was the moment - this was the time - when we came together
to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves,
and our highest ideals.”
If that isn’t
megalomania in full bloom I don’t know what is! But, we decided to believe him
and the flowery rhetoric got him elected and then re-elected. As the years have
passed, the megalomania has become more pronounced. He has convinced himself
that his intellect and charm are the trump cards in the high stakes bridge game
of politics and international diplomacy. He’s decided that he, by executive
decree, can “tweak” laws he doesn’t like. And in the recent debate and sabre
rattling about military intervention in Syria he referred to America’s sons and
daughters as “my military.” Some say it was a Freudian slip of the tongue and
meant nothing. I don’t believe that for a moment.
About all that’s left
for Barack Obama to do is to snatch the crown and drape the ermine robe of rule
around his shoulders.
So there you have it.
One man is advancing a vision of a renewed, relevant Russia. The other is trying
to lay claim to the title of boss of the world.
Who’s going to win? If
recent events are any indication, Vladimir Putin has a substantial lead in this
race to the top.
How did that happen?
Here in America we’ve been led to believe that Mr. Putin is crude, calculating,
and manipulative. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has created and fostered the
image of himself as the smartest man in any room at any time. The answer is
clear. Appearances can often be deceiving.
To be sure, Vladimir
Putin is an autocrat. He’s also ambitious, calculating, and manipulative. But
he’s also an extremely intelligent man. While it’s true that he served in the
Soviet Union’s K.G.B., it’s also true that he earned a law degree from
Leningrad State University with an emphasis on international relations. His
doctoral thesis – “The
Strategic Planning of Regional Resources under the Formation of Market
Relations,” is far from being the work of a village idiot.
Barack Obama does
have his credentials. He graduated from Harvard Law School. He was the
president of the Harvard Law Review. He worked as a community organizer and as
a civil rights attorney. He taught constitutional law at the University of
Chicago. Not too bad.
Unfortunately for
us, the bloom has come off the rose of Barack Obama’s superiority. Vladimir Putin has taken the measure of him.
It started with Edward Snowden. Mr. Obama mismanaged that affair with what
poets sometimes call the greatest of skill. When Snowden sought refuge in
Moscow, Putin let the President twist in the wind before giving Snowden a year
of breathing freely. In the end, Vladimir Putin, the autocrat, became a
champion of free expression and Barack Obama became a K.G.B. like despot. Now
we’ve got Syria. The President has been banging on the war drum (a tin one at
that) for weeks. Then, thanks to a slip of the tongue from our Secretary of
State, Vladimir Putin stepped into the gap, offering a peace proposal. The
opening was wider than the hole the Kansas City Chiefs line opened with
the sixty-five toss power trap in the 1970 Super Bowl. So, in addition to being a champion of free speech,
Vladimir Putin, the cold, calculating autocrat, can now lay claim to being a
man of peace and a significant player in world affairs while Barack Obama, the
peacemaker, has become the trigger happy war mongerer. How the President
allowed that to happen is almost beyond comprehension. But he did.
The President’s ambitious plans,
grounded in his belief that no one can match his intellect, have gone up in
smoke and flames, as Washington Post columnist George Will noted a few days
ago:
“Barack Obama’s foreign policy
dream – cordial relations with a Middle East tranquilized by “smart diplomacy”
– is in a death grapple with reality. His rhetorical writhings illustrate the
perils of his loquacity. He has a glutton’s, rather than a gourmet’s, appetite
for his own rhetorical cuisine.”
It’s sad. It’s
like watching a cat tease an unfortunate mouse or bird just before he eats it. Not long ago, Peggy Noonan put it even more succinctly in
her Wall Street Journal column:
“A serious foreign-policy
intellectual said recently that Putin’s problem is that he’s a Russian leader
in search of a Nixon, a U.S. president he can really negotiate with, a stone
player who can talk grand strategy and the needs of his nation, someone with
whom he can thrash it through and work it out. Instead he has Obama, a
self-besotted charismatic who can’t tell the difference between showbiz and
strategy, and who enjoys unburdening himself of moral insights to his peers.”
I think this has rankled
Mr. Obama. His ego’s been bruised. The crown’s been tarnished and the bloom
really is off the rose.
Things are so bad
that people are beginning to see the real Barack Obama. Military historian
Victor Davis Hanson recently observed that
“After five years of this, the world
caught on, and sees juvenile and narcissistic petulance in lieu of
statesmanship—and unfortunately a sinister Putin takes great delight in
reminding 7 billion people of this fact almost daily.”
Even reliable media allies are
turning on the President. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, for example, poured
this salty tidbit into the festering wounds:
“Unlike Bill Clinton, who excels at boiling
down complex arguments to simple ones, Obama prefers to wallow in the weeds,
reminding people that he’s the smartest man in the room and expecting their
support because he feels he is only doing what’s complicated and right.”
We’ve had many warnings about the
dangers of this kind of megalomania in the past. One that seems appropriate
right now comes from the pen of John Jay (Federalist 4, written in the late
1780’s):
“Absolute
monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but
for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military
glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition… These and a variety of other
motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage
in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people.”
John Jay knew
what he was talking about. He and his fellow American colonists had just
defeated the mighty British Empire in our Revolutionary War. If only King
George III and the British parliament had seen it all coming. But, it was close
to impossible. Megalomania tends to blind one to reality.
At the end of that war, tradition has it that the British
played an old tune titled “The World Turned Upside Down,” a stanza of which
follows:
“If buttercups buzzed after the bee,
If boats were on land, churches on sea,
If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows,
And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse,
If summer were spring and the other way round,
Then all the world would be upside-down.”
The world does occasionally turn upside-down. Empires
fade; new empires supplant them. “Wise” men are proven to be fools. Are we
witnessing such a turning now? It’s early and the geopolitical wheel’s still
spinning, but things aren’t looking good for the smartest man in the room.
What does all of this mean to you
and me? Will sanity prevail in the end? Sadly, it all seems to depend on
the whim and will of Barack Obama. That, and his hubris, have made these times
that really do “try men’s souls.”
