 merrie says: That Nick the Turk is one astute observer. I got whacked with something and spent yesterday on the couch, nose in Robert Harvey’s The War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain and France: 1789-1815* when not dozing. Fascinating reading with not a few lessons regarding war and politics in general. Now, Obama’s no Bonaparte. They are no matched historical set. But as you examine the totality of Obama’s career to date, there are some curious parallels. Not so much the part about being an outsider shouldering his way in … Napoleon of course was a Corsican with an Italian accent, which made him a foreigner and a provincial bumpkin though integrated into French society through political connections and education. Obama, of Kenyan and white American descent, raised in part overseas, after all was welcomed and acclaimed exactly for reasons of his minority status, due to the nation’s and his political party’s interest in recognizing and elevating minority populations. Napoleon, unlike Obama, didn’t get carried into power on the crowd’s shoulders as the second coming. He had a harder and more hazardous job manipulating political factions to achieve his ends, and when that didn’t quite put him over the top, did it by force. The parallel is more the megalomania … the operating principle that history was all about him, the notion that to defy him is to defy history … and the cockamamie political and strategic ideas that he got a chance to exercise once in power. Another key difference. Obama, after being elected, remains short on accomplishments. Napoleon, by the time he took power and engineered a plebiscite to secure it, had accomplis... |
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