Over at the Standard I’ve got a medium-sized piece on President Obama’s vanity. There’s nothing really new in–it’s mostly a compendium of stuff we’ve all seen for the last two years, but tied together and in one place. Mind you, it’s an incomplete list. And the catalogue keeps growing.

Mentioning the piece, Scott Johnson adds a few bits, my favorite being that Obama’s vanity “almost disposes of the speculation that Obama is a Muslim. The man can’t be a Muslim; he worships himself.” Scott also notes a line from Obama in India about the Mahatma, MLK, and, well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. But here’s Scott: “Obama gives us history in the form of an arc bending inevitably toward himself.”

The Belmont Club’s Richard Fernandez also adds a much more literate and philosophical riff, contrasting Obama’s sense of self with that of Churchill, who was never bashful about his own merits:

Both men saw themselves as agents of greatness. Where they differed was where they ascribed its source.  That and the fact that Lincoln and Churchill have already achieved that mantle of greatness which Obama so confidently believes is his. In the case of Lincoln and Churchill their presentiments are confirmed by the fact that they fulfilled them. They have already walked the walk. And now we see the talk was true. In the president’s case his claims have not yet been confirmed by events. . . .

It may be that his presentiment will prove true, though perhaps he  should have waited until those events actually took place before claiming the due. But that would have been for lesser men, for minds less certain of their powers. And the central point of Jonathan Last’s entire essay was that for Barack Obama, destiny shone so clearly before him that he could touch it and hold it in his hand.  And therein lies the danger. For if fate can promise, it can also betray.  The three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth knew that some things should only be reckoned in the end.

And the great Jennifer Rubin teases out some of the implications of Obama’s vanity-driven administration:

the colossal failure of his international endeavors, specifically his Muslim Outreach, is traceable to the faulty notion that one can construct a nation’s foreign policy based on the persona of its president. It sounds daft — why would the Israelis and Palestinian simply reach a deal because Obama has arrived on the scene? Why would the mullahs be enticed to curb their nuclear and hegemonic ambitions because he allegedly ”understands” the Muslim World? The Ego has made hash out of foreign policy because he believes, as the saying goes, that the world revolves around him. He can’t imagine that rivals, foes, and allies are immune to his charms.

Among the anecdotes I left out was a scene I witnessed at an Obama campaign rally before the Nevada caucus in 2008. Michelle Obama was introducing her husband to a crowded school cafetorium (?) and she said made a very concerted point of the following: “Barack is one of the smartest men we will see in our lifetime.”

Now look, many (most?) wives have idealized visions of their husbands. This is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s quite good. And perhaps even necessary for the survival of the species. But it’s one thing to think that your spouse is better looking, or more charming, or more intelligent than he really is. And it’s another to insist–to a room full of people–that he’s a Stephen Hawking-level genius. Even if we were to stipulate that Barack Obama is really, really, really smart–maybe the smartest guy ever in American politics (which, by the by, is almost certainly not true), you could walk into the cafeteria at MIT right now, swing a bat, and knock over three people who have 20 IQ points on him.

Exit question: The piece came out online Saturday morning. What’s the over-under on the “uppity” charge? Tuesday?

PS: I may update this thread through the day.

Update 7:02: A reader passes along this fantastic bit from a 2004 Ryan Lizza profile of Obama in the Atlantic:

I couldn’t help noticing, when we sat down to talk in the dilapidated storefront that houses his Springfield campaign headquarters, that the blue-pen drawing he’d doodled on his newspaper during fundraising calls was a portrait of himself.

I’ve got a piece at the Standard about some different cross-trends concerning Obama’s reelection. In it, I mention that there’s a possibility Obama could face a primary challenge, but it would come most probably from his left. Galley Friend P.G., however, makes the following observation:

Go check out last week’s NYT op-ed pages. Guess who has a really good op-ed: Evan Bayh. Guess what else he has: a $10M war chest that he refused to donate to dem candidates even as he was retiring from the Senate. $10M isn’t much in terms of presidential runs, but it’s enough to build an organization for Iowa.

I think it’s wrong to hypothesize about a primary challenge solely from the left. You can’t run on Obama’s left on domestic policy, and if you try to run to his left on the wars, he’ll just say that he tried to end the wars but was blocked by Republicans and the military (and he wouldn’t be lying). However, you can run against the war to Obama’s right, based on the cost of the war and its impact on the deficit.

Maybe there isn’t a difference in saying “We need to end the wars because our soldiers are dying, we’re occupying a foreign country, blah, blah, blah” and “we need to reduce the deficit, as part of my plan I’d like to end the wars because they cost too damn much”. I, however, think there is a huge difference in these two positions. I think one comes across as post-VietNam pacifist nonsense while the other seems fairly reasonable. And I suspect there is a huge portion of middle-class white Dems who would agree.

Wanna know what I secretly think: Evan Bayh, with a Republican Congress and split Senate, would make a helluva Prez. He’s like Clinton without all the Clinton baggage and Clinton attack machine. Kinda like a 2000 McCain, only a little more pro-union and a little less pro-life.

Galley Friend K.A. sees broader openings:

The conventional wisdom is that a primary challenger to Obama couldn’t get traction because of the black vote. But I seem to remember Hillary polling pretty respectably against Obama among blacks. That all disappeared once it was time to get to voting, of course. But primary challengers might be able to believe that they could peel off some significant black support. The point is that Russ Feingold, or Hillary, or a prevailed-upon Howard Dean would only have to think they could beat Obama in order to really shake up the 2012 race. And a wounded Obama will look vulnerable, causing ambitious Democrats to see an opportunity. A primary challenge isn’t unthinkable, and even talk of a primary challenge is itself enormously damaging. Especially if the economy is continuing to doing poorly.

And about that: Americans’ feelings about the economy tend to lag around six to twelve months behind the actual data about how well or badly the economy is doing. People were still feeling pretty happy when the recession first started; they will still feel like they’re hurting long after unemployment has gone back down to 5 or 6 percent. That means that if the economy doesn’t really get moving immediately, people are still going to be really unhappy with the president by the late summer of 2011 — when potential 2012 candidates will be making their am-I-serious-or-not decisions. Prime conditions for a primary challenge!

Howard Dean is the other guy I’ve been thinking could challenge Obama, and he’s even better poised than Feingold. A former DNC chair who led the party during its recent successes times, he’s well liked for being a straight talker; his primary-night howl has now long been forgotten, or at least forgiven; and he’s been very smart about putting a bit of distance between himself and President Obama on healthcare and a few other issues. But I now see that, just in the last few hours, Dean has reportedly said, through a spokesman, “He is absolutely, categorically not running in 2012.” Ah well. Always time to change your mind, Howie!

The other wild card in all of this is Bloomberg, who needs neither the time to build an organization nor any rational evidence that he could win a presidential election.

As promised, I’m going to venture a guess at what’s happening. Some thoughts, in no particular order.

* Two weeks ago, the CW seemed to have 50-ish seats as the best bet.

* Last week, the CW seemed to believe that 60 seats was the most likely GOP pickup.

* Looking around, I believe that as of Sunday night, 70 is the new 60.

* The major reason for this shift was Gallup’s release of its final generic ballot numbers. As my buddy Jay Cost explains, the final GOP generic lead in 1994 was +6.4 and they wound up with a net of 54 seats. Gallup’s final number this time is GOP +15. The RCP average is only GOP +9.4. If you drew a straight-line, this would put the Republican pickup today somewhere in the range of net +79 and +126.

* I doubt that this straight-line projection is much help, but then again nobody knows because we’ve never seen numbers like this in the modern era.

* Also of some note is the gerrymandering of districts along racial lines. This practice produces a reliable number of minority House members, but at the cost of somewhat overstating the electoral throw-weight of Democrats in national polls. The astounding difference between Obama’s approval ratings among racial groups suggests that the polls we look at today may understate how well Republicans will perform.

At the end of the day, who knows what this all means. Predictions are just a parlor game and we’ll know soon enough. But since parlor games are fun, I’ll throw out a guess: Republicans pick up a net of +80.

That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they finished at +65 or +70. And I also wouldn’t be totally shocked if they finished +90. Ninety seats seems totally within the realm of the possible, if not the likely. (I would be very surprised if the pickup was sub-60.)

Update: I’m still not sure what number would shake Democrats into worrying about Obama in 2012 (meaning, pushing for a primary challenge or for him to not run for reelection). I suspect that if such a number exists, it’s likely to be very, very high. And in any case, it’s unlikely Dems will reach for the eject button on Obama, however much they might like to.

However, if a Democrat was so inclined to punch out of Obamaworld, there’s an easy line to take: That Obama has already accomplished so much for the country that the most important thing left now is to consolidate those gains and to make sure Those Evil Republicans don’t repeal them. In fact, Obama’s contributions are so immense that they’re more important than the man himself, even!

Looking at nothing but the same numbers everyone else is looking at, it strikes me that a 60-seat swing in the House is the most likely outcome but that 70 seats is firmly within the realm of the possible. And that if Republicans have a good day, where things break right for them, 80 seats (and beyond) are possible. Maybe this is a crazy reading. You will have your own thoughts, I’m sure.

We can all lay down predictions tomorrow, when I’ll put up a crystal ball thread.

Since yesterday I’ve been thinking a little more about what the reaction to the election results will be next Wednesday. As a rough guide, I suspect the story will be played somewhere along these lines:

35 – 40 seats – Threat Level Green: All is well for Obama and the Dems, full speed ahead.

40 – 50 seats – Threat Level Blue: Spun as Obama overperforming expectations, waved off as “just like 1994,” no big, etc.

51 – 58 seats – Threat Level Yellow: The country threw a temper-tantrum, people are ungrateful, if only Obama had been more aggressive/more progressive/less bi-partisan, things might have been different.

59 – 68 seats – Threat Level Orange: Republicans are dangerous, America is a scary place, man the barricades because the GOPacalypse is nigh. If we don’t reelect Obama in 2012, brownshirts will roam the countryside murdering and pillaging and disbanding the Department of Education.

69+ seats – Threat Level Red: Can Obama save his presidency? Is it possible for a Democrat to mount a serious primary challenge?