The inauthentic man faces a difficult balancing act, for he is not only avoiding the truth, he has forgotten where he put the truth.

Barack Obama has gifts, but also some significant flaws that should be considered as we head into the final days of this election.

Calm or arrogant?

He has mastered the appearance of calm, but in the final weeks of the campaign an edgy, even disdainful arrogance has crept into his tone.

Consider the Nixonian response to Joe the plumber, unleashing the campaign, Democratic government and the media machine on a solitary citizen who asked a question that exposed Obama’s philosophical approach to economics and government.

There is a line between being cool and being disdainful of other opinions or honest discourse. This was evident when Obama made scornful comments about Joe and it surfaced again in Florida when Obama tried to deflect charges of socialism with a gibe that, yes, he had once shared his peanut butter sandwich in grade school.

Now, a man who has spent as much time in the company of the kind of folks Obama knows should walk carefully here. This is not an answer to the serious concerns that Americans have about his philosophy of government and as president he will not be allowed the easy escapes he is being given on the campaign trail.

The cult of personality

I am not sure any president in our history has so assiduously cultivated a campaign built totally on personality rather than on issues, philosophy or experience.

There is a reason. He is wrong on many issues, his philosophy is left and he has no experience. Consequently, with the help of the media, we are instead fed endless psychological profiles rather than substantive analysis of serious issues.

The New Republic only recently published a fascinating essay about the invisible nature of Obama’s true personality, and the author, who supports Obama, was making the point that Obama has hidden his real self because he fears political blowback.

From the Greek columns to the infomercial to half-serious talk about the messiah, Obama and his supporters have lost sight of one of the great virtues of our government and history – that no president is greater than the office he will occupy. It would be nice to see some humility from the man, or a little more of that John Kennedy self-critical whimsy. But one senses that Obama takes himself very seriously (he is more Robert than John that way) and has allowed the cult of personality to destroy his authenticity. We are not being sold the true personality, but a personality shaped and created for mass consumption. Brands are helpful for marketing, but they cannot be sustained unless there is substance behind the brand.

Authenticity

And this leads to the question of authenticity. Whatever else you might say about Bush, McCain or Palin, they are real people fighting their own flaws or demons or issues, whatever they may be. I would even concede that Biden is who he appears to be.

But Obama has sacrificed authenticity in order to create a mythology. Now, some might argue he had no choice given the stereotypes about race, others that you don’t argue with success. But the issue isn’t that he has to be someone he is not, the argument is that he should have been required to have an honest discourse about who he is, else he invites skepticism and disbelief.

He has rarely or forthrightly addressed the tough issues about his campaign or his associations or his philosophy of government. He has been placed on a pedestal by the media and he is starting to act like a man who believes he belongs there. One never sensed this about John Kennedy, for example. He had an open, self-critical dialogue with the nation and the media. One always sensed he knew the truth about himself and this made him likeable.

Obama is as bad as Bush about being able to come up with examples of his own mistakes or failings. That is because the brand does not allow it. He could have dismissed all the talk about Ayers and his past associations by simply acknowledging that in his youth, experimenting with ideas and new approaches to government and philosophy, he made mistakes that he regrets – and that he has moved past those mistakes to embrace the mainstream of American politics.

That he has not done this invites the fear that he actually shares some of Ayers’ core beliefs – he wrote a blurb for an Ayers book only a few years ago, so the distancing is harder to sell, but he might have at least tried.

The inauthentic man faces a difficult balancing act, for he is not only avoiding the truth, he has forgotten where he put the truth. In the tough days of trying to be president, that is the kind of self-delusion that creates missteps and a hubris that often leads to downfall.