The One: Philosopher King or Sophist?

Peter Wehner,"Our Sophist-in-Chief" (Commentary):

While I realize my efforts to decode Barack Obama may turn into a never-ending task, I want to focus on another of his rhetorical habits: his ceaseless attempts to portray himself as America's philosopher-king, the person standing not only above country but above politics itself. Obama is, he would have us believe, uniquely able to transcend old, tired, and rutted debates, to think anew, and to bring a fresh, creative approach to the problems of our time. He alone inhabits the upper world.

Whether it's the economy, health care, education, poverty, gay rights, the word is that "... the last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory ...." On the last issue, for example, he says that "though we've made progress, there are still fellow citizens -- perhaps neighbors or even family members and loved ones -- who still hold fast to worn arguments and old attitudes, who fail to see your families like their families and who would deny you the rights that most Americans take for granted."

What should one think about this? Wehner suggests the following:

• That what is most tired, old, and worn out is Obama's lazy rhetorical ploy. He relies on a few stock, and by now hackneyed, phrases to substitute for a serious engagement with issues.
• That his words reinforce the impression some of us have that his most dangerous personal characteristic is his other-worldly self-regard. He seems to believe he is unlike, and better than, any others who have come before him. He sees himself as a man of awe-inspiring intellectual honesty, a mind rinsed off of prejudice and bias.
• That "despite his pretensions to the contrary - [he] is a completely orthodox, doctrinaire liberal. His policies are strikingly uncreative and, if I might borrow from the Obama lexicon, tired, old, dogmatic, ideological, and discredited. Is a top-down, government-controlled, tax-and-spend approach to economics fresh, new, and interesting? As President, Obama has shown no intellectual boldness when it comes to his policies. Most of his reforms are hollow and non-existent... More than any president in modern times, he is deferring to barons on the Hill to steer the ship of state. Whatever that qualifies as, it is not a break with worn-out ideas and the politics of the past.
• That Obama fashions himself as the Great Liberator - freeing us from old arguments, old creeds, and old ways. Mentioning the past is meant to evoke barely disguised contempt; it is the harbor for antediluvian prejudices. Obama alone can remake the rules and remake the world. There is something vaguely utopian and deeply un-conservative in Obama's attitude. And, I might add, deeply unwise and dangerous as well.

Wehner concludes: "Barack Obama, it turns out, is not our Socrates; he is our Sophist-in-Chief. As this becomes clearer over time, more and more people will make their way up the steep and rugged ascent, out of the cave, free of the shadows, and into the sunlight."

[Hat tip to E.E.]