Are we Argentina yet?

I’m all for celebrating Christmas, and I would be disappointed if the White House didn’t have a Christmas tree, but do they need 54 trees?

Amazing how a reelection can reshape an incumbent’s thinking about many things. Now safely ensconced in the White House for 49 more months, the Obamas have decorated the place with 54 Christmas trees this year.

Even allowing for the usual Washington excesses with taxpayer money, that’s a whole grove of Christmas trees.

“We have 54 trees in the White House,” an excited Michelle Obama proudly told visitors the other day. “54!  That’s a lot of trees.”

In fact, the Obamas’ 54 trees this year are almost 50% more Christmas trees than last year. That was during the campaign before Obama whispered a reminder to the Russians that he had to be careful until Nov. 6, when a victory would give him more “flexibility.”

Now, how much carbon do you suppose those 54 trees could be sequestering had they not been chopped by this green president?

Perhaps the idea is that when the little people are suffering from a prolonged economic downturn, they should be allowed the vicarious pleasure of watching their betters revel in luxury. Such is the way in many Third World countries.

What is also the way in such countries is having wives assume power when their husbands are no longer able to have it. While I don’t like to think the United States is that kind of country, I see that Michelle Obama is already being touted as a future president in the most gushing terms possible:

Samuel L. Jackson recently told Newsweek […}”….She can be the president. She’s history and she’ll stay history because she is so amazingly smart and together.”

Jackson isn’t the only person thinking along these lines. “I’d love to see her get more into politics because it would be a breath of fresh air in D.C.,” says Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. “She’s honest and straightforward, which is not what you see in Washington much. She is exactly what we need around here.”

Yet therein lies the contradiction of Michelle Obama: a woman who is perhaps one of the most skilled politicians of our time seems to have little interest in pursuing politics herself. “Nothing she’s done indicates she wants more power on the national or international front,” says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Yet everyone else says she has to have it.”

She has to have it? I can remember when they talked that way about Hillary Clinton, but she did at least have to get her feet wet by winning election to the Senate. Michelle Obama has done nothing of substance that I’m aware of other than the crusade against childhood obesity.