Witness his mockery, during a speech in March, of Rutherford B. Hayes as a Luddite about the new technology of telephones. Never mind it was false (Hayes was something of a technophile, in fact); the key is that mocking former presidents confirms his sense of himself. As for having his staff rewrite the biographies on the White House website — turning old presidents into humble precursors who made straight the way for Obama — that, too, seems no more to the current president than his due.

The most revealing moment, however, may have come in May when Obama informed Jewish leaders that he knows "about Judaism more than any other president", despite the fact that James Madison was a Hebrew scholar of some renown. John F. Kennedy, no slouch in the arrogance department, once told a set of Nobel prizewinners that they were the greatest gathering of learning in the White House "since Thomas Jefferson dined alone". That the line was scripted, there is no doubt — but it was scripted to express a certain American piety about the Founders. 

It would have been so easy for Obama to make a similar gesture: "I know as much as about Judaism as any president, except, of course, for Madison — who knew more in a day than most of us will know in a lifetime." But that would have needed some humility, however false. It would have required Obama to present himself as something less than the greatest gift history has ever made to the presidency. 

The man whose mind is the mind of "I" could never allow such a thought to intrude.