The second debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney delivered few surprises, including the obviously planted questions as well as a moderator purposely helping the Democratic candidate. However, from the sidelines, and following the debate, the first questioner Jeremy Epstein talked about his interaction with the candidates once the cameras had been turned off.
Here is what Jeremy had to say of this interaction, “I asked him (Romney) if he's gonna give me that job in two years and he said 'Maybe,'” Epstein said. “Then I was speaking with President Obama asking how his Chicago Bulls are gonna do, because they lost their MVP Derek Rose, and he said that I could not beat him in one-on-one, but I disagree with that.”
Here we have twenty year old kid on the world stage, facing the individual sitting in the most powerful office in the world, and what does this “most powerful man” do to him? Slams him.
Obama’s ego just cannot take a back seat to anyone. Even a young student
has to be put in his place. Might this have been an opportunity for the President to lift this student’s spirits on a personal level during his one on one away from the microphones? Could Obama have been just a little self-deprecating, even jokingly? Not a chance. Obama has no empathy. There is no room for empathy in egotism. The self-serving mind cannot be modest or critical of itself. It must at all times retain the upper hand, and cannot help itself, even as its words and actions discharge vast quantities of arrogance.
This private moment is further evidence that Obama is incapable of being conscious of his own shortcomings. How can he be re-elected, since by his very nature, it is impossible for him to have learned anything from his past actions? Re-electing such a character simply guarantees four years of more of the same and probably worse.
We’re not looking for general self-deprecation in a leader, but we would certainly expect a President to not ‘need’ to ‘better’ a twenty year old student. Obama was not in a competition with Jeremy Epstein, so why the slam away from the cameras? He can’t help himself.
This interchange innocently reported by a wide-eyed student confirms much about the character and nature of the individual sitting in the Oval Office.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.