The President of Contempt

The President of Contempt:

Only after Mr. Obama came to office did it start to become clear that contempt would be both a style and method of his governance. Take the "mess we have inherited" line, which became the administration's ring tone for its first two years.

Snip

for a president to rail for years against a predecessor of any party is crass—and something to which neither Reagan nor Lincoln, each of them inheritors of much bigger messes, stooped.

Then again, the contempt Mr. Obama felt for the Bush administration was merely of a piece with the broader ambit of his disdain. Examples? Here's a quick list:

The gratuitous return of the Churchill bust to Britain. The slam of the Boston police officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates.

The high-profile rebuke of the members of the Supreme Court at his 2010 State of the Union speech.

The diplomatic snubs, petty as well as serious, of Gordon Brown, Benjamin Netanyahu and Nicolas Sarkozy.

The verbal assaults on Wall Street "fat cats" who "caused the problem" of "10% unemployment."

The never-ending baiting of millionaires and billionaires and jet owners and everyone else who, as Black Entertainment Television's Robert Johnson memorably put it on Sunday, "tried rich and tried poor and like rich better."

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