Remember how all earmarks were going be stricken line by line from any bills? (Excluding, of course, those earmarks that go to the Democrat special interests.) Remember how special interests were no longer going to hold sway over government decision-making? (Unless those special interests are the teacher’s union, trial lawyer’s, or teamsters.) Certainly, we all know how his well-publicized promises of “bringing government together in bipartisan support” evaporated as soon as he took the oath of office.

Of course, none of this comes as a shock to anyone who spends a couple of minutes thinking through any of what President Obama says in his lofty-sounding but utterly empty speeches. In that...

Remember how all earmarks were going be stricken line by line from any bills? (Excluding, of course, those earmarks that go to the Democrat special interests.) Remember how special interests were no longer going to hold sway over government decision-making? (Unless those special interests are the teacher’s union, trial lawyer’s, or teamsters.) Certainly, we all know how his well-publicized promises of “bringing government together in bipartisan support” evaporated as soon as he took the oath of office.

Of course, none of this comes as a shock to anyone who spends a couple of minutes thinking through any of what President Obama says in his lofty-sounding but utterly empty speeches. In that sense, Petit and President Obama are very similar. While Petit fancies himself to be a great artist, he really is nothing more than a glorified circus performer. And while President Obama imagines himself to be the new savior of the modern world, in reality he is turning out to be exactly the same kind of political hack that his shallow rhetoric and shady Illinois background would lead us to expect.

Where he differs from Petit is that Petit was unquestionably the best at what he did - whose skill on a tightrope was unparalleled and even justified a certain level of hubris. President Obama, on the other hand, is already demonstrating that on top of being a Socialist ideologue he is an incompetent decision-maker. In some cases it results from his inability to say “no” to the special interests that control him. Witness his staggering decision to start a trade war with Mexico (a country already teetering on the brink of chaos) that will cost the United States billions of dollars in tariffs simply to please the Teamsters demand that we deny access to ninety-seven Mexican trucks.

In other cases, his bad decisions seem to stem from naivety and arrogant self-delusion. Example: his warm and fuzzy “Happy New Year” video asking the Mullahs of Iran to make nice so we can all hold hands and sing “Kumbayah” together. I’ll bet that had them chortling all the way to their nuclear bomb facilities.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama seems to be the first ever “New Age” President. Entirely self-invented, he has, through sheer strength of will and astonishing chutzpah, “manifested” himself into the Presidency. Like the wirewalker, Petit, he is charming and glib (so long as the teleprompters are working) and sweeps aside any ideas that don’t comport with his agenda. Also like Petit, he...

In other cases, his bad decisions seem to stem from naivety and arrogant self-delusion. Example: his warm and fuzzy “Happy New Year” video asking the Mullahs of Iran to make nice so we can all hold hands and sing “Kumbayah” together. I’ll bet that had them chortling all the way to their nuclear bomb facilities.

Unfortunately, Barack Obama seems to be the first ever “New Age” President. Entirely self-invented, he has, through sheer strength of will and astonishing chutzpah, “manifested” himself into the Presidency. Like the wirewalker, Petit, he is charming and glib (so long as the teleprompters are working) and sweeps aside any ideas that don’t comport with his agenda. Also like Petit, he is not a serious man but rather is a man besotted by his own celebrity status. Why else spend an enormous amount of taxpayer dollars to fly himself and his entourage out to Hollywood, just so he could claim to be the first President ever to appear on the “Tonight Show?”

All this would be somewhat entertaining if it didn’t have gravely serious worldwide implications. Petit and his cohorts could jauntily afford to pick the pockets of the police and it would all be seen as an amusing prank. When President Obama and cohorts like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed pick all our pockets to fund their Socialist expansion of Big Government, it is far more serious. There was a lot less likelihood that Petit would fall off his wire than there is that our President and his radically misguided policies will drive our country into an economic ditch from which we may never fully recover.

The ironic metaphor I took away from watching “Man On Wire” came from seeing Petit blithely traversing his wire between the now evaporated World Trade Center towers. Those towers were destroyed a mere 27 years later by the greatest concentrated evil that has yet faced mankind. Sadly, President Obama seems to be dancing on a wire of his own narcissistic construction, oblivious to the maw that gapes below him.