More hubris, or: What is the point of an 'educated class'?

Both Obama's critics and supporters see the need for him to hit the re-set button on his administration. It is expected that a rookie president will make mistakes and need to alter his course as he comes up against (and faces) reality.

But Jennifer Rubin doesn't see Obama as being capable of self-correction:

But Obama is not a man whose views have been challenged or who has been forced to reconsider that much of what he “knows” simply isn’t so. He has lived within the cocoon of academic elites, liberal doves, and fawning fans, who reinforce his misconceptions about the world. For him to cast all of that aside and reconsider his fundamental assumptions about the world would take quite an act of intellectual courage and political daring. I just don’t see it happening. I hope I am wrong.

Neither does Victor Davis Hanson, who reminds us that tragedies don't usually end well:

Unchecked hubris always incurs nemesis that leads to atê or destruction. In Obama’s case, we are witnessing such a sequence. His hope and change speeches are no more empty of substance than they ever were. But now the studied accentuation and Rev. Wright inculcated cadences are shopworn, the allusions tired and transparently the work of twenty-something speechwriters who ran out of clichés around March. The blame Bush continues, but it now is monotonous and sounds like the proverbial three-year-old’s sob.

NPR and the blogs use to ridicule Bush’s “nuclar,” but at least Bush joked about his own problematic philology. In contrast, does one believe Obama even recognizes that 300 million Americans wince when he says, “Let me be perfectly clear…” or “ Make no mistake about it” or repeats “I” or “me” or “my team” for the 30^th time in his speeches?

If Obama gives yet another press conference or interview, and references himself as a nontraditional minority landmark figure who is not only a testament to our own moral progress, but also a reminder of how bad we were in the past, well, we are at the point where most will either snooze or laugh.

Bottom line, as it were:

But in tragedy most recognition comes after, not before, the fall.

Case in point: Obama's stonewalling on his broken C-SPAN promise. Take your blood pressure meds before you read Byron York's account of Gibb's answers.

Very insightful observations from Ms. Rubin and Prof. Hanson. Which makes me wonder, who belongs to the "educated class" -- Rubin and Hanson, along with Mark Steyn, Stanley Kurtz, Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Malkin, and many others, who serve society by warning it against the snake-oil salesman who would be king? Or those who allow themselves to be dazzled by the salespitch and scold the rest of us for not joining the mass-swoon? A sharply creased pant, degrees from the right schools (transcripts not required), a first class temperament (oops -- scratch that), and a membership card to the Educated Class do not qualify a man to lead the free world.

Read both part 1 and part 2 of VDH on Obama as Greek tragedy.
Related post: VDH on Obama's hubris.

*Update: Another insightful post from Jennifer Rubin on Obama's tragic flaws here. In it she cites this from The Hill and this from Michael Barone.

[This is a revision of a post from yesterday.]

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