Obama: American Nero.

James Taranto says that Obama is not like Carter, he's more like the Emperor Nero (for the graduates of the public school system, he is said to have "fiddled while Rome burned").

Quoting John Gibson:

Last week's jobs report tanked the stock market; the president took weeks to assert control of the oil spill that threatens doom on the Gulf Coast--but at the White House the Gatsby-like parties roll on as if happy days were here again.
Just yesterday, President Obama held another fun-filled White House event, a picnic for Congress members, complete with hot dogs, cold beverages and a fire pit.
All told, during the last seven weeks of spewing oil and rampant unemployment, he has frolicked and danced through three major White House music parties.

Gibson allows that "the president looks elegant and cool in his tuxedo, dancing to Jay-Z or the aging 'cute Beatle,' " by which he does not mean Ringo Starr. And we have to say that if forced to choose, we'd take glib Obama in his dinner jacket over dour Carter in his sweater.


Still, there's got to be a happy medium here between Jimmy Carter and Nero. If the president is acting like an emperor, he surely has been encouraged to do so by the obeisance of media figures like Newsweek's Evan Thomas, who a year ago, when his magazine was still in business, described Obama as "sort of God."

There is a difference between Obama and Nero.  According to history, Nero ruled well for a while before devoting himself to sport and theater.