Obama has shed his vanity. Just ask him

Boston Globe Opinions ^ | 9-27-2016 | Jeff Jacoby

[Sir Napsalot]

Nothing oozes hubris like Barack Obama putting on a humble act.

“There’s a point where the vanity burns away and you’ve had your fill of your name in the papers, or big adoring crowds, or the exercise of power,” the president tells historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in an “exit interview” published by Vanity Fair. “And for me that happened fairly quickly.” Since he no longer revels in his own grandeur, he explains, he won’t fall into the trap of making decisions out of ambition or “thirsty” attachment to the prerogatives of high office.

Do tell.

Five years ago, Obama claimed that his accomplishments compared favorably to those of any president with the “possible exceptions” of Lyndon Johnson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Now he says that if he’d been blessed with “the genius of an Abraham Lincoln or the charm of an FDR or the . . . legislative acumen of LBJ,” his terrific record might have been even more terrific.

So when Obama says that the “vanity burns away,” what he apparently means is: Nothing changes.

[Billthedrill]

Nice to know he’s extirpated vanity, which was really the only flaw in his complete perfection. We are not worthy.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

One can imagine him telling the audience...
“I once was conceited so I went to a psychiatrist. NOW I’m PERFECT!”