Obama's audacity of hubris

By Rex Murphy

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world like a Colossus. That may turn out to be a problem.

Barack Obama was touring the geopolitical capitals of the Middle East and Europe all last week. He traveled less as a mere nominee for the U.S. presidency (even that is not yet officially secured) than as some combination of emperor and rock star.

Trailing in his charismatic wake was a whole legion of the top stars of the U.S. press corps. All three news anchors of the big networks were with him. When John McCain travels abroad, as he does and has done frequently, Mr. McCain is lucky to attract the attention of the local stringers. And back at home, during what was undeniably Obama Week in American journalism, when Mr. McCain touched down on a campaign stop in Manchester, N.H., there was not a legion, not even a clutch of reporters, but one lonely local newsperson to witness the arrival of the other nominee.

Judging from last week, as far as the mainline American press is concerned, John McCain could be running for dogcatcher in Peoria and campaigning for it on Mars.

Senator McCain himself must bear some of the blame for the disproportion. He's been around a long while. His campaign is torpid and timid. And the press already had something of a one-night stand with him (in 2000 when he ran against George Bush for the nomination). But, if intensity of coverage is the index, Mr. Obama will win all 50 states by acclamation, and as a fillip -- after the great Berlin rally and set speech of the colossus on Thursday -- may very well be elected president of the European Union too.

A portion of this may be explained. Senator Obama is new, charismatic, a historical candidate because of his race. And the media will have their infatuations and pack frenzies. Also Mr. Obama has the almost immeasurable advantage of being the near perfect counter-icon to George W. Bush.

The deep well of visceral and reflexive contempt for Mr. Bush by most of the American press' deep thinkers (if the oxymoron may be forgiven me) is a source of fuel for their idolization of Mr. Obama. But none of these factors gives a full accounting of the Obama phenomenon.

The missing element may be the candidate's equally sterling appreciation of himself. The rally in Berlin was the cue for this line of thought. As far as I know, this was his first visit to Germany. I could see him, on a first visit, as a candidate for the presidency, making calls on the Chancellor, meeting with opposition politicians, doing -- as the Windsors call it -- a bit of a walkabout.

But what was the idea behind a nominee for the highest office of the United States conducting a campaign rally in Berlin? Throw away those disclaimers from the Obama camp that the rally wasn't political. Mr. Obama doesn't knot his tie without politics providing the mirror.

It's strange to have to note this, but, he isn't yet president. He has absolutely no record at all of involvement in foreign policy.

Correction: He did offer unqualified, insistent opposition to the Petraeus surge in Iraq, which turned the war around to the point that some of its most relentless critics now maintain "it cannot be lost." In other words, on the one definitive issue, post-invasion, on his country's most important foreign involvement, the one decision the inarticulate and sublimely unhip Texan in the White House made alone, and got right, Mr. Obama was perfectly, publicly wrong.

There's very little wood -- if you'll allow the metaphor -- in that record, on which to build a podium to address Europe at a mass rally on your first visit to one of its ancient capitals. But Mr. Obama has self-confidence, he has sublime self-assurance. It's hardly more than two years ago that he was but a Chicago politician whose entire national resume was a speech to John Kerry's nominating convention.

And it's less than two months ago that, ever so narrowly, he managed to edge Hillary Clinton out of contention for the nomination yet to be confirmed. It was razor close.

Yet, there he was Thursday, acting in every way as if he were already president delivering, Urbi et Orbi, a proclamation. There was something almost glorious about the presumption: Call it the audacity of hubris. There was also and equally something very reckless about it. The only set who seem more enraptured than a good part of the U.S. media about the Obama campaign is the Obama campaign and the candidate himself.

The self-assurance, the commanding confidence of his campaign may turn out to be a transcending dynamic that rockets him into the White House while Mr. McCain is still trying to find a reporter to talk with. On the other hand, he may be signaling millions of voters that this untested candidate is just a damn sight too cocky for his own, and their, good.

Rex Murphy, a columnist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto, is a commentator with The National and host of CBC Radio's "Cross-Country Checkup."