During the nationally broadcast 9/11 ceremony from New York, President Obama stood there in a Bill Clinton pose -- his nose perched high in the air -- seemingly unmoved even as others wept and bowed their heads in prayer. It was a troubling and incongruous posture for the leader of a nation commemorating the worst terrorist attack in American history. Obama's expression of remoteness and arrogant disdain was so palpable that the Wall Street Journal chose to feature it on the front page of the Monday edition. In a striking photograph taken by Kristoffer Tipplaar, Obama is pictured with his nose at a 45-degree angle standing next to George Bush, whose face, furrowed from the effects of eight years in office, is bowed deep in prayer. In the photo, former President Bush comes across as just the sort of humble and reverent man he is; Obama appears to hold himself above the proceedings, uncomfortable among the ordinary folk gathered for the occasion and deeply contemptuous of everyone there.
When it came time to speak, Obama read woodenly and haltingly, with no sense of emotion, from the prepared text on the teleprompter. In what the Boston Gazette called "a study in contrasts," Obama delivered an unattributed and ill-prepared reading of Psalm 46. The audience seemed dumbfounded as to the point of his selection, and Obama offered no clue as to his intent. It was as if the teleprompter itself had recited Psalm 46 and then shut down, smugly remote and above it all.
Then George Bush rose and addressed the grieving families from the fullness of his heart. Bush read from a letter by Abraham Lincoln to a mother who had lost five sons in battle. Like Lincoln, who signed his letter "Yours, very sincerely and respectfully," Bush managed to convey his deep sense of respect and regard for the assembled 9/11 families. It was surely no accident that those in attendance, including thousands of family members of the victims, broke into spontaneous applause at the conclusion of Bush's moving remarks.
While Obama fulfilled his responsibilities on 9/11, he appeared to do so ungraciously, as if he resented having to commiserate with ordinary folk. Or perhaps he was upset at having to share the stage with George Bush. Maybe he was simply uncomfortable at having to appear before an unvetted audience of ordinary citizens, men and women who were not hand-selected members of a public-sector union or students at a liberal university. Perhaps he feared that this audience of real Americans would allow their real feelings toward him to be known.
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