Like most Americans, I have been charmed and beguiled by President Obama’s presence on the stump.  His winning persona and powerful rhetoric are his best weapons.  But is that all there is to him?

President Obama’s decision to go for broke in Copenhagen was reckless and unpresidential.  It betrays a confidence in his rhetorical power that borders on the egomanical.  It is certainly, like all things Obama, ego-referential. 

Imagine!  How could the world reject Chicago after hearing a personal appeal from President Obama?  After hearing him recount,with sadness, his personal history of uprootedness?  After hearing him extol a metropolis that feels like a small town, and his retelling of the Great Fire of Chicago?  (Where was Carl Sandburg’s “HOG Butcher for the world”?  Not politically correct.)

Now the president has to fly home with nothing to offer the hungry press in the back of the plane than Air Force One Peanut M&Ms.  When he arrives, he will have to contend with the simultaneous announcement that the United States has just under 10 percent unemployment.

Just as no general can win a battle with cannons alone, this president can no longer rest on the big gun of his rhetorical presence.