The things that REALLY anger our president

People of ordinary sensibility and ordinary patriotism are outraged that mobs in the Middle East and Europe have attacked sovereign American territory (for that is what an embassy is) and have murdered and desecrated Americans serving this country.  Obama is not outraged.  If anything, he seems irritated that these people would interrupt what is, for him, the more important business of running a campaign.  So it was that, despite these attacks against America, he jetted off to Vegas to party and raise money.  Even his single public statement was muted:

I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Gosh, he “strongly condemns” an attack against Americans.  Next thing you know, he’ll send the perpetrators to the corner, after first having them write 500 times on the chalkboard “I will not attack American diplomatic facilities.”

Is this just “No Drama Obama” in action? Is his emotional temperature lower than every else’s, much so that he never loses a preternatural calm that makes him incapable of reacting strongly when the country he leads comes under attack?  The evidence shows that the opposite is true.  Obama is as capable of anger as anyone else.  It’s just that murderous attacks on sovereign American soil aren’t what get his blood boiling. Other things do, though.

Obama gets mad when things don’t go his way:

The president called three times to speak with Boehner about his latest offer, according to Woodward. But the speaker didn’t return the president’s phone call for most of an agonizing day, in what Woodward calls a “monumental communications lapse” between two of the most powerful men in the country.

When Boehner finally did call back, he jettisoned the entire deal. Obama lost his famous cool, according to Woodward, with a “flash of pure fury” coming from the president; one staffer in the room said Obama gripped the phone so tightly he thought he would break it.

“He was spewing coals,” Boehner told Woodward, in what is described as a borderline “presidential tirade.”

“He was pissed…. He wasn’t going to get a damn dime more out of me. He knew how far out on a limb I was. But he was hot. It was clear to me that coming to an agreement with him was not going to happen, and that I had to go to Plan B.”

Our first half-black president gets upset when he thinks American police were racist:

President Barack Obama was last night embroiled in a growing row after accusing police of “acting stupidly” when they arrested America’s most prominent black scholar at his own home.

He made the comments at a press conference on Wednesday night despite admitting he did not know all the facts surrounding the incident involving Harvard Professor Henry Gates Jr.

Admitting that Prof Gates, 58, was a friend of his, Mr Obama made it clear he considered the police were at fault.

“I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home,” he said.

Barack Obama gets angry when one-time supporters loudly challenge his presidency:

The famously-cool President lost his temper in Connecticut yesterday [October 30, 2010] after hecklers interrupted a speech he was giving at a rally.

Astonished attendees watched as Mr Obama interrupted his own speech as the hecklers – believed to be activists seeking more global Aids funding – began chanting at him.

‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ he said repeatedly, trying to speak over the hecklers. When they kept chanting, he fell silent for several seconds, looking visibly angry and raising one hand in frustration as the crowd began to boo around him.

He gets angry when an American governor tries desperately to get the federal government to enforce its own laws in order to stem the flow of criminals into her state:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer came to greet President Barack Obama upon his arrival outside Phoenix Wednesday. What she got was a critique. Of her book.

The two leaders could be seen engaged in an intense conversation at the base of Air Force One’s steps. Both could be seen smiling, but speaking at the same time.

Asked moments later what the conversation was about, Brewer, a Republican, said: “He was a little disturbed about my book.”

The mere sight of Netanyahu seems to affect Obama’s temper.  He stormed out on Netanyahu during one meeting and glared at him while he talked at a joint press conference.

The common thread, of course, in all these different examples of Obama being roused to anger is Obama himself.  Each episode involved a direct attack against him or, in the case of Henry Louis Gates, his racial proxy.  That’s what makes Obama angry.

America, however, is not Obama’s proxy.  He has no emotional investment in his own country.  For him, it is merely a vehicle for his Progressive policies.  The emotional attachment that ordinary Americans, including many Democrats, feel for their country — the one that has them say “an attack against America, is an attack on me” — doesn’t exist in Obama’s emotional universe.  The only thing that exists in Obama’s emotional universe is Obama.