“This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.”

That’s a quote from NEA chairman Rocco Landesman, the man Obama handpicked to run the education union.

Where to begin?

We could start with the fact that Caesar was a man who took a republic and turned it into an Empire.  If that’s what the NEA wants us to think of Obama, so be it.

We could point out that the category of politically powerful authors includes such luminaries as Hitler and Lenin, so being a world leader who wrote a book isn’t necessarily something to be so impressed with.

Maybe we could point out other, far superior historical figures who published books.  Frankly, Obama has done nothing to put himself in the same class as people like:

Winston Churchill
Benjamin Franklin
Ulysses S. Grant
Ronald Reagan
Dwight Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy (a Pulitzer Prize winner)

If we wanted, we could make the argument that the works of Teddy Roosevelt, which Landesman dismisses, are themselves far superior to anything Obama has put to paper.  In particular, African Game Trails and The Rough Riders are fascinating, entertaining reads for anyone interested in history.

Leaving the political realm, writers like Shakespeare, Twain, Hemmingway, Hawthorne, Eliot, and Dickens have done more to shape U.S. and world culture than Obama could ever hope. 

In the end, however, all we have to do in order to discredit Landesman’s claim is point out the fact that America’s top NEA official is a sycophant moron who thinks Lincoln wrote a book.

He didn’t.

One hopes the teachers who make up the membership of the NEA are smarter than its leader.

- Robert Laurie