RUTHFULLY YOURS

In a story titled “The ego factor: Can Barack Obama change?” Politico highlights a passage from David Remnick’s Obama biography, The Bridge. Remnick quotes White House adviser and longtime friend Valerie Jarrett:

I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary. He knows exactly how smart he is. … He knows how perceptive he is. He knows what a good reader of people he is. And he knows that he has the ability — the extraordinary, uncanny ability — to take a thousand different perspectives, digest them and make sense out of them, and I think that he has never really been challenged intellectually. … So, what I sensed in him was not just a restless spirit but somebody with such extraordinary talents that had to be really taxed in order for him to be happy. … He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.

This quote is rather astonishing, even by ObamaLand standards.

On his trip to Asia, the president might consider pulling out a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress and reading about the dangers lurking in “a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity.”